Knit Two (Friday Night Knitting Club #2)
Kate Jacobs, 2008
Penguin Group USA
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780425229927
In Brief
The sequel to the beloved #1 New York Times bestseller, The Friday Night Knitting Club.
At the Manhattan knitting store founded by Georgia Walker, the members of the Friday Night Knitting Club—including Georgia's daughter Dakota, now a college freshman—continue to rely on each other for help, even as they struggle with new challenges: for Catherine, finding love after divorce; for Darwin, the hope for a family; for Lucie, being both a single mom and a caregiver for her elderly mother; and for seventy something Anita, a proposal of marriage from her sweetheart, Marty, that provokes the objections of her grown children.
As the club's projects—an afghan, baby booties, a wedding coat—are pieced together, so is their understanding of the patterns underlying the stresses and joys of being a mother, wife, daughter, and friend. Because it isn't the difficulty of the garment that makes you a great knitter: it's the care and attention you bring to the craft-as well as how you adapt to surprises. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Born—N/A
• Raised—near Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
• Education—B.A., Carleton University (Ottowa); M.A., New
York University
• Currently—lives near Los Angeles, California, USA
Kate Jacobs is the New York Times bestselling author of Comfort Food, Knit Two, and The Friday Night Knitting Club, which has over 1 million copies in print.
Kate grew up near Vancouver, British Columbia, in the scenic and delightfully named town of Hope (pop. 6,184). It’s an area filled with friends and family and Kate loves to visit. Back then, of course, it was tremendously boring, as only home can be to a teenager. As a result, Kate begged her parents to send her to boarding school in Victoria, BC. From there she traded in her navy blazer to earn a Bachelor’s degree in journalism at Carleton University in Ottawa. Next, in a fit of optimism/courage/naivete—take your pick—she followed it up with a move to bustling New York City (pop. 8,143,197).
The plan? Breaking into magazine publishing. First she received a Master’s degree at NYU and worked at a handful of unpaid internships, then got a spot as an assistant to the Books & Fiction Editor at Redbook magazine. It was here that Kate answered multiple phones, read a ton of slush (getting to know some wonderful writers-to-be), and began to experience the impact of sharing women’s stories. Around this time, Kate settled into an apartment complex that housed about as many people as her entire hometown in Canada: It seemed that she wasn’t just a small-town girl anymore.
Professionally, Kate made it a priority to explore content that resonated with women: She was an editor at Working Woman and Family Life and was later a freelance writer and editor at the website for Lifetime Television. Personally, as a newcomer to New York, she learned the power of building a surrogate family and stitching together friendship connections that will endure. Exploring the richness of women’s relationships is a key focus of her novels.
After a decade of Manhattan living, Kate moved to sunny Southern California with her husband. (And discovered that she likes suburban living just fine, thank you very much.)
She relished the idea of her very own home office but found herself setting up the laptop on the dining table, just as she’d done in New York, and writing late at night in her pajamas.
A firm believer in the creative power of free time, Kate loves to recharge by tackling knitting projects that she can finish quickly (all the better to feel that sense of accomplishment). She’s also a fan of taking naps, especially when she’s on deadline, snuggling under a favorite green-and-yellow afghan knitted by her grandmother decades ago. Her beloved liver-and-white English Springer Spaniel, Baxter, often snoozes alongside. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Continuing the warm-and-fuzzy saga begun in her popular The Friday Night Knitting Club, Jacobs stitches together another winning tale of the New York City knitting circle, more a sisterhood than a hobby group (the irascible Darwin Chiu can't even really knit). In this installment—and it does feel like an installment—readers catch up five years after the unexpected, book-capping death of club leader (and knitting shop owner) Georgia Walker. Georgia's 18-year-old Dakota is at NYU, discovering her first love, while her father James and Georgia's best friend Catherine are still coming to terms. The rest of the cast runs a wide gamut of ages and experience, but is easier to follow this time around, as Jacobs is more comfortable giving them more space and backstory. Pregnant, whip-smart professor Darwin and her husband, Dan, are welcoming twins; video director and single mom Lucie is coping with a hyperactive 5-year-old and a failing parent; Georgia's old mentor, the wise Anita, begins questioning her own motives; and everyone's stories cross paths in satisfying, organic ways. A trip to Italy provides some forward motion, and pays off in a charming denouementthat nevertheless pushes a familiar it's-the-journey-not-the-destination message; still, this sequel is as comforting, enveloping and warm as a well-crafted afghan.
Publishers Weekly
Jacobs's sequel delves into the lives of characters first introduced in the popular The Friday Night Knitting Club. Five years after Georgia has died of ovarian cancer, her daughter Dakota and various members of Georgia's knitting club still occasionally meet at her knit shop. On the surface, the story is about what has happened to these women who formed deep bonds of friendship while learning to knit. Yet it really investigates grief and how each of the characters learns to come to terms with the loss of Georgia. Readers might find some of the events a tad un-realistic and the individual plotlines for each character a touch predictable as they develop and intertwine. Still, the novel's humor and pathos manage to make the women and especially Dakota very real and enjoyable to know. Knitting is not completely forgotten, as readers are left with a sense of how the craft has calmed these souls as they journey through their individual stories of acceptance and personal growth. Fans of Debbie Macomber's "Blossom Street" series (The Shop on Blossom Street, A Good Yarn, Back on Blossom Street, and Twenty Wishes) will find much to enjoy here.
Margaret Hanes - Library Journal
Jacobs’ follow-up to the popular novel The Friday Night Knitting Club (2007) opens five years after Georgia Walker’s tragic death from ovarian cancer. Her daughter, Dakota, is now a freshman at NYU, and Georgia’s former employee, Peri, is running Georgia’s yarn shop.... Reading Jacobs’ second knitting novel is as warming and cheering as visiting old friends. —Kristine Huntley
Booklist
Discussion Questions
1. "The desire to keep everything as it had once been—to freeze time—remained very strong among the group of friends." In what ways did the ladies of the Friday Night Knitting Club manage to keep things as they were? Have the changes made after Georgia's death been a positive or a negative for the members of the club?
2. "Having children had never been a question when Anita was young; it was simply the expected order of things. Marriage meant babies and babies meant marriage. Still, it was nice that things were different [now]. Could be different. Anita believed in having options. On the other hand, sometimes it was hard to know which end was up these days." Which part of being a single mother does Anita feel is "nice" and which makes things seem like "it was hard to know which end was up these days?" Is that a statement about the stigma of unwed motherhood? Or about the hectic pace of single mothers' lives? Or both?
3. In her haze of exhaustion and stress, Lucie agonizes: "When was it going to make sense? When was she going to wake up and not feel tired? When was it going to feel all right?" Is she typical of women today? Is Lucie's experience as a single mom more stressful than Anita's, where "the expected order of things" made all the decisions for her?
4. Catherine always feels out of step with the other members of the club, and at one point reflects: "She wasn’t like the others. It was the one reason why she never really fit in. They were all quite…typical. And she, well, she was different." Is she really? Why? What, if anything, makes the other members of the group "typical" compared to Catherine?
5. Lucie is forced to defend herself when her brother accuses her of being selfish and not seeing how much help her mother needs: "There's no rule that a daughter has to do more than a son, and there's sure as hell no rule that single people should give up their lives so married people get a break." Is this true? Do you think Lucie's brothers are being unreasonable? Is Lucie being punished for her life choices or simply being forced to acknowledge that she's being pulled in different directions? How would you have reacted to that conversation?
6. Did Lucie make the right decision in not telling Will that he was Ginger's father? Darwin advised her to "think long and hard before you throw a nuclear bomb into his happy family life." Would you have thrown the bomb? Should Lucie have?
7. How would this story have been different if Anita had not been reunited with Sarah in Rome?
8. When she reaches out to K.C., Catherine tells her: "I’m still trying to define myself. I embraced my independence but somehow everything is just all about me. I am totally self-focused." Do you think Catherine has "defined herself" by the end of the book?
9. Discussion of grief and loss runs through both Knit Two and The Friday Night Knitting Club. As Anita says "We grieve loss. It's not always about death." What are Anita, Dakota, Catherine, Darwin, Lucie and K.C. grieving for? Are the men of the book—James, Marty and Nathan—also experiencing grief or loss?
10. After the flood at Walker and Daughter, Dakota and Peri decide to rebuild. Is this the right decision? How would their lives have changed—perhaps for the better—if they had not rebuilt the store Georgia founded?
11. In her acknowledgments, author Kate Jacobs says "Like the members of the club, I am fortunate to be surrounded by smart, independent women who come through for me whenever I need a helping hand." What's the "club" that fills that role in your life?
(Questions from author's website.)
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