Besides knitting, reading is one of my favourite hobbies (gosh I feel old!). So what’s better than getting to knit AND read on the same night? Curling up with a cup ‘o tea and a good book about knitting! :D There aren’t a lot of fictional novels that incorporate knitting into the storyline but I have been able to find a handful of them over the past year. So without further adieu here my first book review….
About a year ago I read the Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs and instantly fell in love with the women in this book whose lives were tied together with the craft of knitting. It is a dear, witty and heartbreaking story of so many women we know in our own lives. The premise of the book is a knitting group that meets at the ‘Walker and Daughter’ store near 77th and Broadway in New York City. Here are some of main characters:
Georgia Walker, a single mom and owner of Walker and Daughter. She is a self-made woman who took the road less traveled and chose to raise a child on her own while trying to establish a business. She is the rock that everyone leans on and the glue that holds the group together.
Dakota, Georgia’s spunky and smart daughter who is a maestro baker and whips up batch after batch of sweet treats for the ladies of the knitting club. She is wiser than her years, an old-soul. We meet Dakota when she is just coming of age, starting to become curious about the father she has never known.
Anita, an old widow, trying to still get past her husband’s death. She keeps herself occupied by working at the knitting store and playing surrogate grandmother to Dakota. At her age Anita is the oldest member of the knitting club, yet she is able to connect with women and girls from a completely different generation. Through the novel we see her starting to redefine how a woman of her age, a widow, should or should not live her life.
Darwin, the emotionally detached PhD student who is struggling privately to keep her long-distance marriage afloat. Her husband is doing his residency in California and they are biding time until they can live like a proper married couple. Darwin is one of the most interesting characters as she starts out as the student doing her dissertation on domestic crafts (such as knitting) that negatively define the stereotypical gender roles. She dislikes knitting and what it stands for, questioning how these women can voluntarily participate in an activity that clearly demeans their abilities and the role of the modern career woman. We see her transform from a keen observer to an active participant at Walker and Daughter.
There so many more interesting characters in the book. Take Catherine for example. She is Georgia’s childhood friend whose life couldn’t be more different than Georgia’s. She has all the luxuries of life that the other women at the club can only dream of. Being married to a wealthy man means being part of the who’s who in NY high life. Catherine reconnects with Georgia when she commissions her to create original hand-knit couture for a special function. It is fascinating to see Catherine’s journey as her assumptions and judgments are “corrected” and she starts to see her life as it truly is.
The story starts to unravel when Dakota’s father, James, shows up one day wanting to be a part of his daughter’s life, having regretted all the years he was hiding from his responsibilities. Georgia is thrown into a situation where she struggles internally to be a reasonable, rational human being and letting James get close to Dakota. However, James’ presence threatens everything she has worked for all her life and the little world she has created for herself and Dakota. I am so happy that Georgia’s character didn’t exhibit any extreme behavior: stopping James in a dramatic fashion or falling for James immediately since he is a good looking, successful man that happens to be the father of her daughter. More often than not the female characters are so helpless and dramatic in fictional works. Georgia is real! She is not crazy but she is not a saint…just somewhere in the middle. Like most of us :) Our lives are painted in shades of gray, not blacks and whites. A good novel is able to capture the ‘grays’ in each character and the Friday Night Knitting Club certainly does a great job of it. I expected this book to be of the typical chick-lit variety but I was pleasantly surprised. It is much more than that. None of the characters in the book are broad stroked caricatures of themselves. They are real people, with real struggles. Some struggles that get resolved and some that don’t…just like real life.
The book consumed me. The women drew me in. We see them deal with their own struggles and personal issues. We witness their successes and failures. Each of them have aspects that any of us could relate to. There are certainly are enough characters that each reader will most likely identify with one or more. None of their struggles are portrayed in a contrived fashion. Somehow the author is able to introduce a large number of characters, develop their stories individually and tie it all together in a rich and meaningful manner. I walked away from the book being reminded that things are NEVER what they seem on the outside, everyone has struggles that we don’t know of and judging others on their appearance means that we may lose out on making a real connection with someone who is not that different from us if we just look beneath the surface. It is also never too late to adjust your lifestyle to match your true values. It is never too late to realize that the life you may be living is not the one you strove for when you were young and there is no shame in admitting that. Sometimes people come into our lives to instigate the questions that lead to personal growth. The key is recognizes when life is throwing us a chance at reflection and growth.
Rating (out of 5): 
