Reviews: The Friday Night Knitting Club, and Knit Two, by Kate Jacobs

These two books, particularly The Friday Night Knitting Club, made me want to dig out my knitting needles and actually learn to make something amazing. I could almost feel the soft yarn, hear the clicking, and feel soothed. I devoured them in two days.

While this isn't to say that they're great literature, there is definitely something to be said for a book that is perfect for a cold winter's day, easy on the mind and soft for the soul. I love books that follow several intertwining stories, and allow me to see events from different perspectives. FNKC did that to an extent, and then Knit Two expanded on that concept, following every character introduced in the first book through his or her own plot line while always maintaining a solid connection to the main story.

FNKC is most completely the story of Georgia, a single mom to twelve year-old Dakota, ex-lover to the newly-returned James, and adopted daughter to Anita. Her knitting shop, Walker and Daughter, hosts the Friday Night Knitting Club, which begins as random assembly of women and evolves into a family cobbled together to feed the women's hungry spirits. Georgia wades through her initial self-concept of herself as a not - not friend, not lover, not daughter, not what she had dreamed of being - and allows herself to accept life for what it is rather than what it is not, learning to forgive others as well as herself. SPOLIER ALERT: I was not quite sure why Jacobs felt the need to have Georgia die. It seemed a little abrupt, and disheartening; figure out life, accept happiness, and then you can die, leaving all the people you have drawn into your life, including your teenaged daughter, adrift. Whee.

However, thankfully, I didn't get to reading this book until well after its sequel's publication, which soothed my upset over Georgia's death by moving forward with all the characters whose lives she touched. The sequel was really necessary, in my mind, and while K2 was much more spread out than FNKC (because it followed all the characters from K2 equally rather than picking one main vantage point and venturing out from there to others tangentally), it seemed appropriate to follow these women out from the shop into the world and back again, their stories knitted together like variegated yarn. While there were many characters, I actually was interested in almost all of them, and cared about their outcome. Anita and Catherine were my favorites, and Dakota was my least, but that may be a reflection of where I am in my own life. I suspect a younger woman might find Dakota the most compelling.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading these books. As I said, not great literature per se, but a pleasure to read. I would definitely read other books by Jacobs.

Rating: four out of five stars - enjoyable, light, well-written, engaging