After Reading

By: Meradeth Houston on 1:48 AM

The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs

Georgia Walker's entire life is wrapped up in running her knitting store, Walker and Daughter, and caring for her 12-year-old daughter, Dakota. With the help of Anita, a lively widow in her seventies, Georgia starts the Friday Night Knitting Club, which draws loyal customers and a few oddballs. Darwin Chiu, a feminist grad student, believes knitting is downright old-fashioned, but she's drawn to the club as her young marriage threatens to unravel. Lucie, 42, a television producer, is about to become a mother for the first time--without a man in her life. Brash book editor KC finds her career has stalled unexpectedly, while brilliant Peri works at Walker and Daughter by day and designs handbags at night. Georgia gets her own taste of upheaval when Dakota's father reappears, hoping for a second chance. The yarn picks up steam as it draws to a conclusion, and an unexpected tragedy makes it impossible to put down.

I've been slacking in the fiction department for a while now, but I've got a backlog of books to read for my dissertation. I'm afraid I'm not going to be reviewing The Mimbres People here, much to everyone else's disappointment I'm sure :) (It's actually a really good book, for anyone looking.) Anyhow, I picked this up from my overflowing TBR pile and dove in. Overall, it was a good book. The characters were real, I felt for them, and I liked their interactions quite a bit. It made me wish I knew how to knit :) I laughed at the depiction of the academic being "too good" or whatever for knitting, as over 50% of the female grad students here knit while studying. It's far more common than most people think, though my sample may be biased as anthropologist tend to have a better grasp on the importance of the past... Okay, I could ramble on that for way too long. Anyhow, I did have some confusion at the sudden POV shifts in the book, where the 3rd person narration was from one character's point and would shift in the middle of a page to someone else's. Really frustrating!

My only real problem with the book was the ending. I mean, I saw it coming (I read the acknowledgements too early I guess, which is never something that's been a problem before, but these gave it away), and it was sad and all, but also felt kinda forced. Like, all the other characters have things working out for them, but something bad has to happen, so let's kill someone off. Um, okay. Anyhow, there's a sequel out "Knit Two" and I'll be hunting for that this weekend at the library book sale :)

Happy Reading!