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Knit Two Manufacturer: Putnam Adult List price: $24.95 55 new, used & collectible available from $12.45. |
| The Sequel to the Beloved #1 New York Times Bestseller The Friday Night Knitting Club The sequel to the number-one New York Times bestseller The Friday Night Knitting Club, KNIT TWO returns to Walker and Daughter, the Manhattan knitting store founded by Georgia Walker and her young daughter, Dakota. Dakota is now an eighteen-year-old freshman at NYU, running the little yarn shop part-time with help from the members of the Friday Night Knitting Club. Drawn together by the sense of family the club has created, the knitters rely on one another 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 seventysomething 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 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. |
Knit Two
Customer Reviews / Knit Two
| I enjoyed this book, almost as much as the first. It felt very real. There was closure from the grief at the end of the first book and yet some excitement and depth to the characters and the intertwined relationships. |
| It isn't the same without Georgia, as some of our characters are still feeling the loss as well. Dakota is trying to find herself but she has her dad and everyone else telling her what to do. Lucie has a chance of a lifetime for her career, but her mother is getting older and more absentminded. Lucie's brothers think Lucie should put her life on the backburner a bit and help with Rosie. Catherine has it all, or does she? All of our favorite friends are back to share their lives, sorrows, happiness and tragedies. Kate has done it again, continuing on with their stories. You won't want to put it down! |
| Kate Jacobs gives us another great read with another twist. I enjoyed getting to know more about each character and how they were doing after the loss of Georgia. I was glad that the book did not dwell too heavily on her character being gone but instead shows how people go on with living after the loss of a loved one. Definitely one for my collection. |
| This book is aimed squarely at those who read & enjoyed The Friday Night Knitting Club and, like many sequels, it doesn't quite live up to the original. To the extent that any 'formula' book -- group of female characters face challenges and overcome them in predictable or unpredictable ways -- can ever be called fresh, the first book qualified and this one, perhaps because we aren't discovering the characters for the first time, doesn't. Moreover, Jacobs leaves a few of her characters almost sidelined for the vast majority of the book, which is unfortunate. (It's hard to compare KC's struggle to quit smoking with, say, Catherine's quest for a meaningful life...) Those caveats aside, I'd give this 'yarn' a 3 1/2 star rating if Amazon allowed, since it amply delivers on its promise to help you pass several bleak winter hours in escapist enjoyment. In this outing, the surviving friends of Georgia Walker, knitter extraordinaire, along with her daughter and one-time lover (and father of her daughter), struggle in various ways to adjust to Georgia's legacy (tangible in the shape of the knitting supplies shop; intangible in many other ways). The book takes on a life of its own when Lucie and Dakota set off for Italy along with James, closely followed by Anita and Catherine, for reasons of their own. There are few surprises, but a few improbable twists, including a rather out-of-the-blue catalyst for the resolution of a few final issues. But overall this is a heartwarming tale. Which is probably the reason anyone will pick it up in the first place, so it delivers what it promises to readers. Best of all for fans of the original -- although I'm reading between the lines here -- it leaves the door wide open for a Knit Three, a book that would address Dakota's future, how James comes to grips with a post-Georgia life, the outcome of Catherine's fledgling romance and Anita's life with Marty. And hopefully a bit more of a role for some of the characters like Peri who got short shrift in this volume. It's almost enough to make me take up knitting... |
| When I heard that Kate Jacobs was writing a sequel to her hugely popular 2007 novel THE FRIDAY NIGHT KNITTING CLUB, I confess I was a little skeptical. After all, Georgia Walker, the owner of Walker & Daughter yarn shop and central figure of the titular club, passed away at the close of Jacobs's debut. But, as she writes in the acknowledgments section of KNIT TWO, "I never stopped thinking about...the entire group, and sitting down to type out my thoughts was a delightful reunion with some old friends." Fans of Jacobs's earlier novel about Georgia, Dakota, Anita and their friends --- the same fans whose enthusiasm convinced Jacobs to write this follow-up --- will also feel like they're reconnecting with old friends when they pick up her latest work. With the way Jacobs has structured her novel, the idea of a sequel doesn't feel so preposterous at all. It opens five years after the events of THE FRIDAY NIGHT KNITTING CLUB, with Georgia's former friends and co-workers struggling --- just as readers will --- with how to move forward without the vivacious, energetic person at the center of their knitting circle. Five years on, some of the club's members have done a better job of coping than others. Peri, Georgia's protégée and part-owner of Walker & Daughter, has seen her designer handbag business take off but has grown increasingly frustrated and disenchanted with the daily grind of running a struggling business. Dakota, the "daughter" of Walker & Daughter, is now a freshman at NYU. She is convinced that she doesn't want to carry on the family business and struggles with feeling disloyal to her mother's legacy. Her secret desire to become a pastry chef leads to frequent clashes with her more pragmatic father, James. James himself harbors deep feelings of guilt and inadequacy, emotions that have made it impossible for him to move forward in another romantic relationship. Romance is also lacking for some of the other knitting club members. Catherine, Georgia's longtime best friend, has found professional success and a series of short-term flings after leaving her stifling marriage, but she fears that years of trying to model her life on others' have left her unsure of her true identity and desires. Lucie, now an in-demand music video director and the single mother of a five-year-old daughter, Ginger, surprises herself by harboring fantasies of contacting --- and reconnecting with --- Ginger's father, who has no idea he has a daughter. K.C., the frustrated editor turned lawyer, has taken up smoking to deal with the onset of menopause and her own regrets. Even those whose personal lives seem to be in order find themselves not only coping with Georgia's absence but also with personal crises. Darwin, the feminist scholar, gives birth to twins and finds motherhood both more and less than she had hoped for. Anita, who has found a second chance in love late in life, finds herself unable to move forward with marriage until she solves a lingering mystery from her past. If all this sounds like a lot to keep track of, you're right. Jacobs gives herself a huge task in trying to juggle this many plot lines, resulting in a novel with as many strands as a complicated Fairisle sweater. Things get even more complex midway through the book, when half the characters embark on a new adventure in Rome, while others remain behind in New York City. Not surprisingly, some stories --- namely Catherine's and Dakota's --- emerge as the most compelling, while others are relegated to supporting status. And, as her legions of fans will appreciate, Jacobs doesn't weave in all the loose ends left in these women's lives, leaving open the possibility that readers someday will be invited to additional meetings of the constantly evolving Friday Night Knitting Club. --- Reviewed by Norah Piehl |
Knit Two
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