The Friday Night Knitting Club

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It's been a while since I've been into a book. This was a great book to lose myself in! When I started reading this I thought I had it all figured out. Self-suffecient Georgia - single mom, business owner, beautiful and focused. She doesn't really need anyone. But, there is a big hole in her heart created by James the absent father of her wonderful daughter Dakota. Georgia plays it safe and carefully creates a place where she is in control of everything...

Georgia has an amazing mentor named Anita. She met her on a park bench in Central Park when she was pregnant and sad and scared and knitting. With Anita's encouragement she began knitting for hire, opened a successful knitting store in New York City instead of running home to her parents in Pennsylvania. She surrounded herself with interesting friends - but she was always the one in control, always the one they went to.

So, I expected James to come back break her heart and leave her to depend on the other women of the knitting group...

But, things didn't go that way. Kathy - the best friend turned back-stabbing, college spot stealing Cat - shows up and wants to make up with Georgia.

Slowly that happens. Very slowly

Then something awful happens that made me sob and sob!! And I'm not telling you anything!
Just read the book!!

The View From Mount Joy by Lorna Landvik

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This is WONDERFUL!! I laughed and I cried and I couldn't put it down. It's a classic Landvik!!

This is the story of Joe Andreson and finding his view of Mount Joy!

He's your typical high hockey star - a good kid whose father was killed and whose mother is trying. So, the story opens with Joe moving to Minneapolis as a senior in high school. Joe becomes fast pals with Darva, the girl who is amazing, but doesn't quite fit in and Kristi Casey the girl who is everything and will let you know that. Joe and Darva have a deep friendship that stays a friendship for a lifetime. Kristi is a user of everything: drugs, people, money, prestige, and most of all Joe. She pops in and out of his life at her whim. Joe falls under her spell for brief moments and then comes back to his real life.

And it's Joe's real life where the story actually is. He fills his life with friends - Ed Haugland being one. Ed is the saddened middle age man who owns Haugland Foods. Joe works for him and plays keyboard for him and stays with him as he slowly dies of MD. And Joe inherits the store he doesn't really want, But, it is the store where Joe finds his joy! On a slow day he decided to start odd little contests - all the groceries you can gather in two minutes for free, a free pie if you are buying eggs, a box of books if you can recite a Walt Whitman poem. The contests are often rigged to share with the less fortunate (grocery run) or to meet a newcomer-eventually to be wife (eggs) or to get others to meet.

As the grocery store becomes more successful, Joe's family grows and thrives and Kristi's star shoots across the sky as the voice of God. Her radio and then TV personea hidden by the layers of makeup and the talk that she spews. Yet, when she is really down and out - it's Joe she calls and Joe who is her friend.

I LOVED this book. Why? The fake of Kristi is so perfectly played against the reality of day to day joy of Joe's life. What we think we want way out there is not what we need close to home. Joe finds his Mount Joy right beside him as he watches his two sons and Darva's daughter who is now his daughter, as he stands close to Jenny the love of his life whose flute playing enchanted him the night he discovered his mother was an amazing teacher and his aunt was gay.

By the way, Mount Joy was named for the spot where Kristi and Joe stood and watched the most amazing northern lights in a drug induced state. Later, Kristi claimed that was the moment she first heard God speak her name. Joe remembers it as a time they stood in awe of nature and the pure happiness of friendship.

So, what is the view from your Mount Joy? Is it a place where secrets are shared and stories are told? Or is it the amazing view of a life lived well? Hmmmm.....

The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies

This is a great example of  an intriguing cover and title, but the book not quite living up to their potential.

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The story takes place in Wales right after D-Day. It follows Esther, a Welsh girl, and Karstan, a German prisoner of war. It sounded like a book you could curl up with and loose yourself in. Unfortunately, I just wasn't able to do that. It moved rather slowly. There seemed to be gaps in my understanding of what was happening, or things I should have already known, or I just was skimming too much! Esther's father is a very nationalistic Welsh shepherd who would much rather be working in the slate quarry. But, due to a strike years before and failing economy, he is stuck with his sheep. Esther is also stuck - she has been proposed to by Rhys as he was getting ready to leave for war. She quickly turns him down. Then in the opening scene of the story, she is attacked by her English date. She tells no one and as the story plods through you discover that she is pregnant - long before she ever admits it to herself. The village is the new home of a POW camp for captured Germans. Karstan appears here after he surrenders. He is also trapped; by the fence, by his understanding of English and his deep realization that Germany will loose the war, by the hopes of his mother and the hero status of his WWI father.

As the book slogs through time the characters slog through their unwanted lives.

For a WWII book about the winning side - there is very little euphoria, very little hope. Instead it's like Esther's ride to Ireland on the train for an abortion. As they arrive in town and she sees the extent of the bombing and destruction she imagines all the places she will never see, all the experiences she will never have all the possibilities that no longer exist because the war has changed them - not only the landscape - but who they are.

So, it's hard to recommend this very strongly. There are some beautifully written passages - but the pace is as slow as the winters in the war!

Home to Holly Springs by Jan Karon

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I have loved the Mitford books and Father Tim for many years. Some of the books have been a little slow in the middle of the story. But, I have always resonated with the real christianity that Tim tries so hard to live. He is more than the sum of his parts - he is human and God-filled. But, there is a dark and depressed side of Father Tim. A side that stays hidden much of the time. This is the book that explains it all. Here are the answers.

Tim travels by himself back to Holly Springs, Mississippi after receiving a letter - no name, nothing more. The letter simply asks him to come. And so he does, not having any idea why. He has a whole group of people to look for in Holly Springs - Willie with only one thumb, Tommy Noles his best friend and blood brother, Peggy, who raised him and Louis and Sally from the farm. His family has long since died - but their ghosts seem to surround Holly Springs.

What Tim finds is much, much more than he imagined. It is the story of a past of questions being answered. Not always the way he would have wanted them to be answered, but answered they are. In the midst of this search he also makes new friend, T and Ray who are restoring his old home, Red at the hardware store. Each of these fills a place for him.

The story also features Cynthia, his amazing wife and Dooley his adopted son.

It's been quite a while since I've read any of these stories -and I have to say - this is one of the best!

The Diplomat's Wife by Pam Jenoff

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Well - this just proves that summer is actually here! It's the first evening of summer vacation, it's 11:23 and I've finished my first book. I didn't start it tonight - it just so happened I finished it tonight!

This book was such a pleasant surprise. I loved the Kommadant's Girl. So, I picked up this one in the book store. I read the back and it sounded amazingly familiar - I figured it would be a repeat of the Kommadant and wasn't all that intrigued...until I started reading it!

This is the story of Marta - the Kommadant's killer. The story begins from the moment she drops over on the bridge after seeing Emma off to a safe future. Marta is captured and tortured by the Gestapo hoping for information about the resistance. She is eventually rescued by Paul, an American who is liberating the Nazi prison where she is kept.

They have a whirlwind romance and Paul proposes. Marta travels to London before Paul to meet up with the aunt of a fellow refugee. But, Paul never shows up - killed in a plane crash on the way to London. Devastated, Marta marries Simon, a diplomat she met on the boat ride to London.

That's about all I can tell you...except Marta does a covert mission back to Germany and meets up with Emma and finds out what really happened to Jacob and just whose baby Emma was carrying at the end of Kommandant.

She also meets up with....

You will just have to read it. This is another great story by Jenoff. There are just enough twists and turns to keep you involved, yet it's predictible enough to be comfortable. And true love prevails! Yippee! :)

Welcome to the Great Mysterious by Lorna Landvik

I really enjoyed this one too!

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It's another Lorna Landvik book, and I think it's one of my very favorites. It is very predictable.. from the beginning you pretty much know that Geneva the Broadway actress is going to connect with her Downs' Syndrome nephew in a deep way and fall in love with the small town mailman...but, that's not the great part.

The great part is how it all happens. This isn't one of the amazing surprises that sometimes Landvik throws, instead it's a comfortable stroll through the growing up moments of one very self-centered former Minnesotan!

Geneva is a twin to Ann who has been offered a once in a lifetime 2nd honeymoon to Italy. The only problem is childcare for Rich - the 15year old son. Geneva has been patronizing of Rich, but to think about spending time with him is more than a little daunting. So, she agrees because she likes the thought of doing it - that seems to be more important to her than actually doing it. What she discovers is an amazing young man and his surrounding cast of characters. She becomes friends with Barb and her son Conrad, Rich's best friend. Connie has cerebral palsy and a contagious outlook on life! But, most of all she meets James, the mild mannered mailman next door.

But, my favorite part of this book is the book they reveal...The Great Mysterious. When Ann and Geneva were girls they created a pocket book with a question on each page. Their mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, ant and uncle wrote their answers on slips of paper to be read by the group. I love that idea. Adults and kid answering the questions together. Each sharing their answers and thier ideas to create a great mysterious. The best part is that they continue the practice through this book. I really like this idea... I would love to try it...

Anyway - I would happily recommend this book!

Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man by Fannie Flagg

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I loved this book. It has all the best of the South in the 50's - movie stars, innnocence, and ridiculous characters. Daisy is the only child of an alcoholic father and a socially frustrated mom. Daisy with her chipped front tooth, gullible and accepting attitude and the sweet innocence of a girl on the edge of womanhood.

From there the book flows from one interesting character and incident to another. From Daisy playing poker in the black pool hall to her and a friend peeking in the curtains of the girlie show. Each get-rich-quick scheme of her father's from raising worms to having the best soda shop on the out of the way beach to having Daisy die and come back to life. Each escpade has it's truth and it's fiction and it's hard to know what to believe and what not to..much like it is for Daisy Fay.

The final joke is on her when she enters a beauty contest to win the runner-up prize to college in NYC. Who is laughing when she actually wins...

This is a fun read!