A few weeks ago, I started reading an extremely challenging novel by Richard Powers. I got to page 168 and suddenly veered off into an orgy of bestsellers, including the treacly The Friday Night Knitting Club. The "knitting book" seems to have followed the "book club book" and the "quilting circle book" as a popular subgenre of novels aimed at women. All share an organizing structure--a group of women friends whose bonding over knitting needles or Jane Austen or quilt squares helps them navigate the life challenges they're facing.
In this case, the group is made up of women who hang around the Walker and Daughter yarn shop in Manhattan. Georgia Walker, owner of the store, is the central character, a beleaguered single mother who has struggled to make the shop go but simultaneously provides an emotional anchor for those who hang around the shop. The other members of the group are a quirky and diverse lot: a Chinese-American grad student, an elderly Jewish widow who has provided capital for the store, a wealthy housewife who betrayed Georgia when they were BFFs in high school, and so on. James, the African-American father of Georgia's daughter Dakota, has reappeared and wants to be part of Georgia and Dakota's life.
The story lines are predictable, aiming to give the reader a warm-fuzziness with a soupcon of sadness. I need to get back to Powers.
Favorite passage:
Being invited into a person's living quarters in New York City is a large gesture of trust. Certainly their choice of artwork, furniture, paint color, reveals much about their taste and style. But that's the case anywhere, isn't it? New York is different . . . . Because unless you go out of your way to live hugely above or below your means, letting a friend, a colleague, a significant other into your home reveals everything: your attitudes, your sense of style, and the state of your pocketbook. . . . Opening your apartment door invites envy or condescension. It changes the playing field.
The truth comes down to this: In a city obsessed with wealth and status, there are few gestures more intimate than being invited into someone's home.
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