Kate Jacobs' The Friday Night Knitting Club

I have not posted a book review in awhile. One of the reasons for this is because every now and then I stumble upon a book that is so unappealing that it takes me a long time to read, and this was one of those books. It is almost as if I procrastinated and would do things other than read because I disliked the book so much. Reading Friday Night Knitting Club felt like a chore on two accounts. The first: it was loaned to me, randomly, by a coworker's mother, who frequently asked about my reading progress. The second: wading through Jacobs' sentence fragments was a consistent frustration. I admit, I cried at the end. Yes, even I can be moved despite shoddy punctuation placement. However, the plot that pulled at my heartstrings did not make up for the rest of the book's faults.

The first fault that impeded my reading pleasure was simply the sentence fragments. For example, "really open" (274) is not a sentence. Yet in the book, r was capitalized, and a period followed open. While I can make certain exceptions for dialogue, I encounter comprehension problems when I am faced with an onslaught of non-dialogue fragments, pronouns with no antecedents, and an infestation of comma splices. Most writing conventions and grammar rules are there for a reason, and that reason is to make writing accessible to the reader. The second fault involved the predominance of cliches. The novel included every stereotypical plot line one can imagine: scorned lover, betrayed best friend, elderly patron, unexpected pregnancy, mixed-race child issues, cheating and adultery, [WARNING: spoiler alert] a surprise death by cancer that brings everyone together. Knitting is the theme that connects all the plot lines, but the final product was like a loose, patchwork sweater that your grandmother made and that you are forced to wear.

Though the novel successfully borders on the inspirational, it does so in the most predictable of ways. I may as well have read a daily calendar of Deepak Chopra quotes. I can only assume that its inspirational qualities are what warranted a sequel to the book: Knit Two. (If the name had been Saturday Night Knitting Club, I might have been slightly amused.) I just hope no one loans me the sequel to read, and if someone does, I hope I can work up the gumption to just say no.

RECOMMENDED: No

NEXT READ: Hillary Mantel's Wolf Hall

REREAD: Our Town

Jacobs, Kate. The Friday Night Knitting Club. New York: Penguin, 2007.