The
Chanel Sisters : A Novel
Judithe
Little
On Sale Date: December 29, 2020
9781525895951, 1525895958
Trade Paperback
$17.99 USD
400 pages
ABOUT
THE BOOK:
For fans of The Paris Wife, The Only Woman in the Room, and The Woman Before Wallis, a riveting historical novel narrated by Coco Chanel's younger sister about their struggle to rise up from poverty and orphanhood and establish what will become the world's most iconic fashion brand in Paris.
A novel of survival, love, loss, triumph—and the sisters who changed fashion forever
Antoinette and Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel know they’re destined for something better. Abandoned by their family at a young age, they’ve grown up under the guidance of nuns preparing them for simple lives as the wives of tradesmen or shopkeepers. At night, their secret stash of romantic novels and magazine cutouts beneath the floorboards are all they have to keep their dreams of the future alive.
The walls of the convent can’t shield them forever, and when they’re finally of age, the Chanel sisters set out together with a fierce determination to prove themselves worthy to a society that has never accepted them. Their journey propels them out of poverty and to the stylish cafés of Moulins, the dazzling performance halls of Vichy—and to a small hat shop on the rue Cambon in Paris, where a boutique business takes hold and expands to the glamorous French resort towns.
But the sisters’ lives are again thrown into
turmoil when World War I breaks out, forcing them to make irrevocable choices,
and they’ll have to gather the courage to fashion their own places in the
world, even if apart from each other.
Excerpt:
IN LATER YEARS, I WOULD THINK BACK TO THAT COLD MARCH day in
1897 at the convent orphanage in Aubazine.
We orphelines sat in a
circle practicing our stitches, the hush of the workroom interrupted only by my
occasional mindless chatter to the girls nearby. When I felt Sister Xavier’s
gaze, I quieted, looking down at my work as if in deep concentration. I
expected her to scold me as she usually did: Custody of the tongue, Mademoiselle
Chanel. Instead, she drew closer to my place near the stove, moving, as all
the nuns did, as if she were floating. The smell of incense and the ages
fluttered out from the folds of her black wool skirt. Her starched headdress
planed unnaturally toward heaven as if she might be lifted up at any moment. I
prayed that she would be, a ray of light breaking through the pitched roof and
raising her to the clouds in a shining beam of holy salvation.
But
such miracles only happened in paintings of angels and saints. She stopped at
my shoulder, dark and looming like a storm cloud over the sloping forests of
the Massif Central outside the window. She cleared her throat and, as if she
were the Holy Roman Emperor himself, made her grim pronouncement.
“You,
Antoinette Chanel, talk too much. Your sewing is slovenly. You are always
daydreaming. If you don’t take heed, I fear you will turn out to be just like
your mother.”
My
stomach twisted like a knot. I had to bite the inside of my mouth to keep from
arguing back. I looked over at my sister Gabrielle sitting on the other side of
the room with the older girls and rolled my eyes.
“Don’t
listen to the nuns, Ninette,” Gabrielle said once we’d been dismissed to the
courtyard for recreation.
We sat
on a bench, surrounded by bare-limbed trees that appeared as frozen as we felt.
Why did they lose their leaves in the season they needed them most? Beside us,
our oldest sister, Julia-Berthe, tossed bread crumbs from her pockets to a
flock of crows that squawked and fought for position.
I
pulled my hands into my sleeves, trying to warm them. “I’m not going to be like
our mother. I’m not going to be anything the nuns say I’m going to be. I’m not
even going to be what they say I can’t be.”
We
laughed at this, a bitter laugh. As the temporary keepers of our souls, the
nuns thought constantly about the day we would be ready to go out and live in
the world. What would become of us? What was to be our place?
We’d been at the convent for two
years and by now were used to the nuns’ declarations in the middle of choir
practice or as we worked on our handwriting or recited the kings of France.
You, Ondine, with your
penmanship, will never be the wife of a tradesman.
You, Pierrette, with your clumsy
hands, will never find work with a farm woman.
You, Hélène, with your weak
stomach, will never be the wife of a butcher.
You, Gabrielle, must hope to
make an adequate living as a seamstress.
You, Julia-Berthe, must pray for
a calling. Girls with figures like yours should keep to a nunnery.
I was told that if I was lucky, I
could convince a plowman to marry me.
I pushed my hands back out of my
sleeves and blew on them. “I’m not going to marry a plowman,” I said.
“I’m not going to be a seamstress,”
Gabrielle said. “I hate sewing.”
“Then what will you be?”
Julia-Berthe gazed at us with wide, questioning eyes. She was considered slow,
“touched,” people said. To her everything was simple, black and white like the
tunics and veils of the nuns’ habits. If the nuns said it, we would be it.
“Something better,” I said.
“What’s something better?”
Julia-Berthe said.
“It’s…” Gabrielle started but
didn’t finish.
She didn’t know what Something
Better was any more than I did, but I knew she felt it just the same, a
tingling in her bones. Restlessness was in our blood.
The nuns said we should be content
with our station in life, that it was God-pleasing. But we could never be
content where we were, with what we had. We came from a long line of peddlers, of
dreamers traveling down winding roads, sure that Something Better was just
ahead.
Excerpted from The Chanel
Sisters by Judithe Little, Copyright © 2020 by Judithe Little. Published by Graydon House Books.
BUY
LINKS:
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR:
JUDITHE
LITTLE is the award-winning author of Wickwythe Hall. She earned a BA in foreign
affairs from the University of Virginia and a law degree from the University of
Virginia School of Law. She grew up in Virginia and now lives with her husband,
three teenagers, and three dogs in Houston, Texas. Find her on Instagram,
@judithelittle, and on Facebook, facebook.com/judithelittle.
SOCIAL
LINKS:
Author website: http://www.judithelittle.com/
Instagram: @judithelittle
FB: @judithe.little
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