The Clothes on Their Backs by Linda Grant

This book captivated me from the start. The way she develops the plot and story line, pull the reader in from the first chapter. The beginning takes place in the present, when Vivien meets her dead uncle's former girlfriend and fiance and there's an iciness and story to be told. The reader senses the tension between the two and wants to learn the story.
The author then goes back to tell Vivien's (and her family's story). Her own folks tell her nothing of their past - they only poison her with stories of her evil uncle. Her parents really don't live. They exist. They feel so fortunate to have escaped thier native Hungary and to find "shelter" in London that they turn their back on the past and don't share it with their daughter. She has a thirst for knowledge, for the truth, for an identity and she learns all of this from her uncle Sandor.
She was told he was an evil and bad man, but in truth, he was just a survivor and a person who wants to live, savor life and is not the bad slum landlord he was made out to be (and served in prison for his crimes).
People choose different outfits to change them on the outside. Here's a great quote from the book:

"The clothes you wear are a metamorphosis. They change you from the outside in. We are all trapped with these thick calves or pendulous breasts, our sunken chests, our dropping jowls. A million imperfections mar us. There are deep flaws we are not at liberty to do anything about except under the surgeon's knife. So the most you can do is put on a new dress, a different tie. We are foreven turning into someone else, and shoud never forget that someone else is always looking."