We were up at the Bluegrass Festival of Books in Lexington (where my sister Karen lives) this weekend. I'll write a lot more about it soon and about going to a Yarn Harlot talk with muggles in tow. I'm a bit under the weather today, so this is just a quick post to recommend one of the books that I purchased at the book fair.
To be honest, I wasn't really planning on buying The Knitting Circle by Ann Hood. Yes, I love knitting but novels about knitting? That seems a bit obsessive. We arrived at the book festival just in time to listen to a panel of knitting authors. I think it was basically an "all the knitting authors at the festival except the Yarn Harlot" panel. In addition to Ann Hood, there was also Susan Anderson of Itty-Bitty Hats (which I also bought) and Stefanie Japel (aka Glampyre) of Fitted Knits. The mix of pattern authors with a novelist resulted in an interesting discussion and I started thinking The Knitting Circle might be an interesting read.
The Knitting Circle is about Mary, whose 5 year old daughter dies unexpectedly. After her mother suggests that she go to a knitting class (mainly to distract her from her grief, I think), she ends up joining a knitting circle. The book tells the story of each of the members of the circle, why they took up knitting, and the role that knitting played in their lives.
Overall, I highly recommend this book. It's very well written and I honestly couldn't set it down. The fact that I've finished the book (when I just started reading it on Saturday night) is both because I had lots of time to read since I wasn't feeling well but more importantly because I felt compelled to keep reading to find out what happened to each of these people. I wouldn't really classify this book as "knitting fiction", it's just plain old good fiction. I don't think you need to be a knitter to find this book very satisfying. It does have quite a few sad moments, but there's certainly a sense of hope and also many happy things that happen as well.
Plot seems very similar to Friday Night Knitting Club.
The knitting parts were really just incidental. The plot could have taken place in another setting. It's really just a group of women who connect with each other, etc. And they knit.
Posted by: Betty | April 24, 2007 at 02:45 PM