Knitting Pearls: Writers Writing About Knitting by
Ann Hood
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Knitters, in my experience, are readers as well. We don't just read about knitting, although many famous knitters are also writers who write about knitting. Perhaps I generalize, but I believe that a collection of essays about knitting is designed to appeal mainly to knitters, since the editor will expect us to identify and empathize with them.
With a few exceptions, this collection will satisfy. Those exceptions are essays in which knitting is so tangential to the essay that one wonders why they were included, or in which the author calls knitters and knitting "...a chew-gum-and-walk-at-the-same-time crowd and an occupation ideal for a zombie. What does he know?
Some examples of excellence:
-- Anne Bartlett, whose growth as a knitter and novelist includes designing an intarsia version of a Scott Joplin rag while editing a book about former cannibals. (Former!)
-- Jared Flood, whose father gives him an old, iconic sweater knitted by his mother, "a veritable Swiss Army knife" of crafting.
-- Clara Parkes, who sees her UFOs* and calls them "beautiful limerence of our first few rows rows together... my personal museum of optimism." (*for the muggles, UFOs are unfinished objects.)
-- Diana Gabaldon, who says "everything you experience forms you as a writer. Why should knitting be an exception?"
Those who do not knit have insights, too - Jane Hamilton, for example, who lives on a sheep form, but chooses not to knit the beautiful, soft yarn milled from her flock. She lived for one summer with the last authentic creator of Harris Tweed, Miss Campbell. There, in the Outer Hebrides, she scraped lichen for dyes while the old woman spun and wove, selling fabric from her kitchen. Hamilton even knitted a scarf, but only because she was cut off from her family except for aerogrammes, deprived of radio and television, and forbidden by Miss Campbell to read. The scarf turned out so "...alarming that probably in this day and age TSA would shut the place down" when she discarded the thing at the airport. A novel is a miracle, she writes, and she has chosen "the miracle of language, the texture and song of speech... so absent on the heath" for her own life's work, her own material.
The book disappoints in two important ways. The first: it is arranged alphabetically by author, not by theme, and thus seems haphazard. The second: what were they thinking? Including six knitting patterns without even line drawings to tempt the reader to try them?
Recommended, in small doses, for knitters and for fans of the included authors.
I received this book from Goodreads, and this is a fair review.
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The Gilded Hour by Sara Donati
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The gilded hour is that liminal time after the sun has set and before all the light has faded - a time to contemplate the day, and plan for the next. The Gilded Hour, set in 1883, illuminates the lives of intersecting families - a thoughtful but realistic police officer who is the son of Italian-Jewish immigrants, two women doctors - cousins - whose struggles to find acceptance and respect are complicated by love and the evil of ignorance, and four Italian orphans who are separated by forces that may be accepted in the eyes of society, but that do not stand up to loving scrutiny.
The sheer detail of this long, dense, vivid book is one of its joys. Nothing - not the last stages of the Brooklyn Bridge, the ferry rides to an unimaginably rural Staten Island, the splendor of the Vanderbilt mansions, the hideous squalor of the streets - is wasted; all of it brings you into the story, breathless and fearful, joyful and expectant. The two cousins, one a Free Woman of Color, struggle against the medical mainstream as well as the forces of Anthony Comstock, which would deny women even the most basic understanding of their bodies and choices. That they accomplish what the do is simply amazing. Even the recent national history is important, as choices made during the Civil War continue to resound through the lives of every New Yorker.
I wish there were more than five stars to award. I learned so much from this book, and I came to love the characters so much. It's going to be hard to wait for the next book in the series.
Thank you, Goodreads, for giving me a copy of this book in exchange for a fair review.
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The Nightingale by
Kristin Hannah
My rating:
5 of 5 stars
Kristin Hannah begins her tale in 1995, as an ailing, elderly woman tells her son that she will not be parted from a steamer trunk that has stood, unopened, for half a century. He believes it contains mundane mementos that can be repacked into a more compact container. He is wrong. Her son loves her, thinks the old woman, but the dependable, ordinary woman he knows has many secrets.
In 1939, two sisters in France live very different lives. Vianne Mauriac's husband Antoine has just been mobilized. She and their daughter, Sophie, remain in quiet Carriveau. Meanwhile, Vianne's younger sister, Isabelle Rossignol, has been expelled from yet another school in Paris. She briefly works for her father's bookstore, but is forced to flee Paris when the Maginot Line breaks. Along with masses of frightened Parisiennes, Isabelle gets the first hint of the suffering France will endure under the Nazi occupation.
The clashes between the sisters began in their childhood, when their mother died and their father withdrew into alcohol. Even the war does not soften the antagonism between them. Vianne's first concern is the safety of her daughter. She refuses to go along with Isabelle's call to rebel. Vianne believes that the Vichy government will keep them safe, but her hopes shatter one by one.
When the German officer who billets at her home, Beck, informs her that Antoine has been captured, Vianne begins to realize that there are levels of collaboration. Is it wrong for her to cook Beck's meals in exchange for antibiotics, or news from Antoine? Isabelle leaves the village to become a freedom fighter, risking her life to ensure the safety and victory of the Allies.
And what of the old woman? She accepts an invitation to go to paris and attend a ceremony. She is dying, but her son will learn the truth about his family.
Every character, every scene, every flash of history in this novel is a clear look at realities: war, love, courage, and compromise. Vianne and Isabelle embody the experiences and choices that everyday people have to face in wartime. Kristin Hannah has given us a look at the courageous women whose actions may be less-known than those of the heroic men, but who were no less courageous and important.
I received this book from GoodReads in exchange for an honest review. Thank you!
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Stardust by Neil Gaiman rating: 5 of 5 starsMy first Neil Gaiman - why have I not read everything Neil Gaiman until now? I'm utterly, totally, eternally in love with this book, and I'm glad that my introduction was narrated by the author. His narration - a bit wry, a lot affectionate - allowed me to do my part: to imagine the towns, the forest, the mountains, and every character, whether human, animal, or creature.I love faerie tales that are written for adults - The Wood Beyond the World by William Morris comes to mind, as do the books by
Charles deLint, Terri Windling, Lord Dunsany, and (ever and always) Peter S. Beagle. They are connections to the shared mythology of the world, and I believe that mythology (and religion) are deep links to the first humans who looked at the sky with awe. They asked the first questions; we still are answering them. If you want to read a plot synopsis, it's available elsewhere/anywhere. Just don't let the faerie-tale genre keep you from reading the book.If you listen to the audiobook, as I did, you will have the additional treat of an interview with Gaiman at the end. If I hadn't quite fallen in love with him before, I was smitten when he said that, to write this book, he went out and bought his first fountain pen in 20 years. Now, he says, beginning to write his fiction by hand gives him a tactile experience, and slows him down -- oh yes. Now I'm off to find the graphic novel, even though the badger will not be wearing a heliotrope dressing gown...View all my reviews on GoodReads
