The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs

So, I wrote this entire post earlier in the week, left my computer, came back, and it was gone.

I was displeased.

So I will do my best to recreate my earlier post but I can't offer you any guarantees.

OK, so, Friday Night Knitting Club was recommended to me by a friend over a year ago and I just got around to reading it - or rather, I remembered a while ago, requested it from the library, it came in, I picked it up, finished what I was reading before, and here we are. It took me a while to get through. It was a much slower read than Jacobs' other novel that I had read previously (reviewed here), but it was also much less superficial. The thing that bothered me the most about this novel (after finishing it) was that the best part of the book comes right smack dab at the end. No, I don't mean like the last 5 words, but within the last 10 pages, and that drove me insane, because it didn't allow for a standard denouement (yeah I just used that word). Instead, it was like, bam, in your face, book over, peace out. No time for resolution, for closure. Is it a coincidence that there are two books after this one in the Knit series? That's what I want to know. Did Jacobs always intend for these to be a series or did they only turn out that way after the success of FNKC? Because if I had read FNKC before the sequel had been written, and then the book had ended the way it does, I would have been pissed. Even so, I still feel kind of slighted. Books need to be able to stand on their own without relying on a sequel to clean up after the mess they've made.

Anyway, now that I've probably completely turned you off from ever reading this novel, I'll tell you what it's about...

Georgia Walker is a single mother who lives in NYC and owns her own knitting/yarn store. The store (Walker and Daughter) serves as the hub in this novel, home base for the cast of crazy characters that float in and out of Walker's life. I say single mother because technically she is - her baby daddy is absent from her daughter's life (until a few pages into the novel, that is), but in reality her daughter is being raised not only by Walker herself, but also by Anita, Georgia's mentor and fellow shopkeeper, and Peri and KC and Marty and...you get the idea. People like hanging out at the store and will often stick around to ask for help on a knitting project, and eventually a club of sorts is formed out of the regulars who always seem to be around on Friday nights.

The novel centers around the lives of the Walker women, but what I think it's really about in the end is the strength of female bonds, and the importance of knitting together a safety net for yourself. There are a couple of male characters in the book but they sort of seem to just add spice to the mix - they're not really what this is about. Walker has this great cast of characters in her life, and they irritate her from time to time, but I came to think of the friends in her life as different threads in her safety net - some of them are weaker threads, others are stronger, but when they all come together, she can lean on them and they'll support her when she needs it. So yes, knitting is what this novel is about in the literal sense but I think it's what it's about in the metaphorical sense as well - knitting together the support of the friends in your life to hold yourself up when you need it.

Did you see that coming?

Me neither.