I love knitting, and I also love the idea of a craft – particularly one that is traditionally women’s domain – offering both solace in and of itself during difficult times, and also an opportunity to connect with other women while learning and practicing the craft. Ann Hood is the editor of a couple of my favourite books on knitting, the collections Knitting Yarns and Knitting Pearls. So going into this, I knew that while it was fictional, she very much knows knitting: it’s something she both knows how to do, and loves. So I was excited by the authenticity I knew she would bring to a fictional book centred on this as a theme.
In that sense, it didn’t disappoint. The story begins with Mary, who is grieving the loss of her only daughter. She has become lost in her pain, and her life is no longer moving forward because of it. Her job has fallen away, she doesn’t socialize anymore, and she rarely leaves the house. Her husband is also destroyed by the loss, but he is using work to focus his energy and get him through, and is becoming concerned about Mary’s inability to move forward by even a tiny step.
Mary isn’t close with her own mother, who has moved to Mexico and isn’t known for her soft touch. So when her mother tells her to go to the knitting store and learn to knit, she dismisses the advice at first. But the concern and disappointment her husband shows when he returns home every day to find her exactly as he left her pushes Mary to try something. Anything. So knitting it is.
What Mary didn’t expect was that this knitting shop and the proprietor of it would lead her to a group of women who would become some of her closest friends. At first they aren’t – she finds it impossible to connect with them through her haze of grief, and perceives them as having perfect lives – there’s the woman who is always bragging about her kids, the woman whose runs a well-known local bakery, the woman who creates beautiful art, the woman who is able to knit socks at a speed that is unbelievable… they’re all so different. And yet, as the novel progresses, we learn each woman’s story in turn and discover that they’re not what they seem.
I loved this exploration of female friendship, and also the way it interrogates the assumptions we make about one another. It shows us the dangers in self-presentation that hides our true selves, but also the value in taking the time to see behind the ways women present themselves to the world to find the things we all share and the experiences we have in common. This book is emotionally wrenching, and deals with everything from death to illness to loss to addiction. But it also shows how we navigate our way through these rocky landscapes, and the importance of supporting one another. By the end of the book I wanted to join this knitting circle, mostly for this group of women, but also because of their knitting knowledge! Worth a read if it appeals to you.
After the sudden loss of her only child, Mary Baxter joins a knitting circle in Providence, Rhode Island, as a way to fill the empty hours and lonely days. The women welcome her, each teaching Mary a new knitting technique and, as they do, revealing their own personal stories of loss, love, and hope. Eventually Mary is able to tell her own story of grief and in so doing reclaims her love for her husband, faces the hard truths about her relationship with her mother, and finds the spark of life again. – Goodreads
Book Title: The Knitting Circle
Author: Ann Hood
Series: No
Edition: Audiobook
Published By: W.W. Norton & Company
Released: January 1, 2006
Genre: Fiction, Friendship, Grief, Found Family
Pages: 352
Date Read: February 2-4, 2024
Rating: 6/10
Average Goodreads Rating: 3.83/5 (11,348 ratings)
