The Knitting Circle

I do a great deal of professional reading and writing for my job. I love to read and look forward to those times that I can sit down with a book of choice and not something work related. I have been known to read while I knit, however, my last couple of projects have been too tedious to allow that. I was book shopping recently looking for some diversionary reading and picked up a copy of The Knitting Circle by Ann Hood. This review is totally my opinion and not meant to offend, please keep that in mind.

I was totally disappointed by the novel and found it very depressing. The character development was weak and I never really cared if the characters resolved their troubles and the knitting content was rather off.

The Knitting Circle is a group of women who knit every Wednesday evening. They are not drawn together through their love of knitting but through tragedies in their lives. Horrific, life altering tragedies; two experience the loss of a child, one looses a son and a pregnant daughter in law in the Twin Towers after being divorced by her husband of 25 years, one is raped in an incident similar to the Central Park jogger and one has battled cancer. Most of the women are emotionally dysfunctional in their lives and are drawn to knitting as a rather zen-like experience. The repetition of the knitting is soothing. There is nothing about the joy of design and color and completion and texture. I just didn't feel it.

The heroine of the book goes to one of the women's houses for help with a sock. While listening to the woman's life story, amidst stitches falling off the needles, she completes 6" of cuff and turns a heel!!! It seems that they all have stitches dropping off needles, that is about the only knitting error mentioned. What about not getting gauge or messing up cables or sleeves that are too long? You know, those things that plague us all.

I found myself getting very depressed while reading it. Each one had such emotional trauma. Some of the women have been in holding patterns for years and seem to finally begin to move back into life again by the end of the book. It is not believable and I just didn't 'feel' it.

I also picked up The Friday Night Knit Club and began it this afternoon. Already, it is so much better than the first book. I am caught up in the characters and want to continue reading to see what happens next.

On a knitting note: The only sport my husband watches is basketball and only when the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill or North Carolina State plays. He attended both of these institutions. They both played this afternoon in back to back games. I finished tier 6 in the shawl. The will face off tomorrow afternoon for the ACC championship so I will have some more knitting time. I would not say I am flying along on this project, however, I am making progress!!