The Wardrobe Department

by Elaine Garvey

Overview

Mairead works all hours in a run-down West End theatre's wardrobe department, her whole existence made up of threads and needles, running errands to mend shoes, fixing broken zips and handwashing underwear. She must also do her best to avoid groping hands backstage and the terrible bullying of the show's producer.

But, despite her skill and growing experience, half of Mairead remains in her windy, hedge-filled home in Ireland, and the life she abandoned there. In noughties London, she has the potential to be somebody completely new - why, then, does she feel so stuck? Between the bustling side streets of Soho, and the wet grass of Leitrim and Donegal, Mairead is caught, running from the girl she was but unable to reveal the woman she'd hoped to become.

Told with rare honesty and equal measures of warmth and bite, The Wardrobe Department is a story about reckoning with the past, finding the courage to change the present - and asking what comes next.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781805302360
Publisher:	Canongate Books
Publication date:	09/09/2025
Edition description:	Main
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Elaine Garvey is from Co. Sligo, Ireland. She completed an M.Phil. in Creative Writing in Trinity College, Dublin in 2000. Her short stories have been published in the Dublin Review and Winter Papers. She has worked as a programme co-ordinator at the Stinging Fly, was awarded an agility grant for her writing and has recently been selected as a participant on a basic income scheme for artists by the Irish Department of Arts. The Wardrobe Department is her first novel.

Editorial Reviews

"The Wardrobe Department is at once familiar and surprising, knotty and tender, tough and beguiling, and its author a sure hand with a light touch . . . Garvey [is] one of those enviable writers whose piercing eye for human contradiction and self-sabotage never dims her affection for the souls she's so beautifully painted"

LISA McINERNEY

"The Wardrobe Department is so beautiful. London theatre and rural Ireland . . . Elaine Garvey has created two exquisitely drawn worlds that I know so well and brought them to life through the eyes of a young woman who could be my best friend. I love this book. Will read it again and again and again"

DENISE GOUGH

"Elaine Garvey is a tremendous new talent in Irish writing - I'm certain the reader will recognise inside half a page that she's the real thing"

KEVIN BARRY

"Told with rare honesty and equal measures of warmth and bite, The Wardrobe Department is a story about reckoning with the past, finding the courage to change the present – and asking what comes next"

IMAGE Magazine

"Delicate and fierce, heartbreaking and ultimately hopeful. An astoundingly good novel. The writing is as sharp and sure as a dress-maker's scissors"

DANIELLE McLAUGHLIN

"From fine stitches to generational patterns, this book is a deft and graceful exploration of the roles we play - and the cost of breaking free"

SHEILA ARMSTRONG

"Whether she’s detailing the drama of an Irish funeral or the panic of a backstage emergency, Garvey’s control of tone and voice is faultless"

Financial Times

"Clever and original" 

Times Literary Supplement

"A quietly thought-provoking work"

RTE

"The Wardrobe Department is full of verve and wit and humanity. In writing that is sharp and sassy, Garvey captures perfectly the complexities and heartbreak of a young woman's life and the great pull and push of home"

MARY COSTELLO

"Astutely observed and beautifully written. I rooted for Mairead all the way to the end of this impressive debut"

LOUISE KENNEDY

"A gift of a novel. I felt relieved after reading it, like I had been hungry for some elusive feeling, and finally found something that hit the spot. There are sentences in this book that will keep me going for a long time"

LOUISE NEALON

"Very well done . . . Elaine Garvey . . . is especially good at dialogue, with a witty, often biting turn of phrase"

Irish Examiner

"A truly beautiful novel. Mairead is an unforgettable character, revealed in tender, sharp, emotional prose. Garvey's sentences form a delicate pattern, the structure flawless, drawing the reader into the hidden world of London theatre and rural Ireland through complex relationships that question what it means to belong. The Wardrobe Department is that rare thing, already a classic. Garvey is an exquisite talent"

OLIVIA FITZSIMONS

"The Wardrobe Department . . . will deservedly be one of next spring's most fashionable titles. Set in the beautifully realised world of a London theatre's costume department, with an interlude in the west of Ireland, its protagonist Mairead is someone to believe in"

MARTIN DOYLE

"Refreshing . . . Garvey excels is placing her heroine in the heart of a busy home, surrounded by people she’s known since childhood, but among whom she feels utterly alone . . . Timely . . . Witty"

Irish Independent - JOHN BOYNE