From Publishers Weekly
Between running her Manhattan yarn shop, Walker & Daughter, and raising her 12-year-old biracial daughter, Dakota, Georgia Walker has plenty on her plate in Jacobs's debut novel. But when Dakota's father reappears and a former friend contacts Georgia, Georgia's orderly existence begins to unravel. Her support system is her staff and the knitting club that meets at her store every Friday night, though each person has dramas of her own brewing. Jacobs surveys the knitters' histories, and the novel's pace crawls as the novel lurches between past and present, the latter largely occupied by munching on baked goods, sipping coffee and watching the knitters size each other up. Club members' troubles don't intersect so much as build on common themes of domestic woes and betrayal. It takes a while, but when Jacobs, who worked at Redbook and Working Woman, hits her storytelling stride, poignant twists propel the plot and help the pacing find a pleasant rhythm. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Audiofile
Kate Jacobss novel about the communal aspects of knitting celebrates the craft, which is finding renewed life in a new generation. Georgia Walker is a single mother who runs yarn shop in uptown New York City. Several of her customers come together to bond in a weekly night of knitting, noshing, and conversation. Walkers 12-year-old daughter, Dakota, a budding culinary entrepreneur, keeps the knitting circle in noshes. Carrington MacDuffies reading make the storys first-person narrator sound detached from the story. The variety of characters and their joys and concerns never come to life. Overall, MacDuffie cannot overcome the superficialities of the story itself. N.E.M. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
