The Friday Night Knitting Club

By: Kate Jacobs

Narrated by: Carrington Macduffie

Length: 12 hrs and 36 mins

Publisher's summary

The New York Times bestselling sensation that’s “Steel Magnolias set in Manhattan” (USA Today)

Once a week, an eclectic group of women comes together at a New York City yarn shop to work on their latest projects—and share the stories of their lives…

Walker & Daughter is Georgia Walker’s little yarn shop, tucked into a quiet storefront on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Its Friday night knitting club is improvised by some of Georgia’s regulars, who stroll into the shop looking for tips on knitting and end up finding much, much more. So now, once a week, they gather to work on their latest projects and to chat—and occasionally clash—over their stories of love, life, and everything in between.

However, unexpected changes soon throw these women’s lives into disarray, and the shop’s comfortable world gets shaken up like a snow globe. When the unthinkable happens, they realize that what they’ve created is not just a knitting club—it’s a sisterhood.

©2007 Kathleen Jacobs (P)2007 Blackstone Audio Inc.

Critic reviews

• Nominee, 2008 Audie Award, Fiction

"Kate Jacobs' breezy first novel reads like Steel Magnolias set in Manhattan." (USA Today)
"[P]oignant twists propel the plot and help the pacing find a pleasant rhythm." (Publishers Weekly)

Wanted to like it but constantly disappointed.

The best part of the book was the knitting stuff -- and I don't even knit.
The characters had potential, but the writing was hackneyed and vastly in need of editing ("said her blond friend" etc.). I'm always looking for books about groups of women, though, and kept listening even though I found myself shaking my head at almost every turn. And I'm not generally judgmental about what they call "chick-lit" but most of what I've read before (Sophie Kinsella, Jane Green, etc.) is well written.
I agree with the reviewer above who said the way it ended was unbelievable and difficult to take. I also had major issues with what passed for parenting skills in the book. (Spoiler alert: Who rewards their kid for running away with an instant trip to Scotland?)
The book actually left me depressed about the state of publishing instead of the fate of the characters.

This one should frogged.

I am a knitter, and it seeemed that a lot of other knitters liked this book. So I chose it, and boy, was it painful. HORRIBLY written, boring characters, incredibly cliche'ed stereotypes, and unrealistic stories. Georgia gives up a place at Dartmouth to stay with her friend, who then gets in and goes? No, this does NOT happen. What was she THINKING?
The narrator was awful too, but I'm not going to hold it against her. I wouldn't be able to read this drivel either.

Words are how you hear them.

The Friday Night Knitting Club was a good book BUT...I was very put off by the manner in which this book was read. The accents of the voices, most particularly that of the African Americans, were rather offensive. I do not know what the narrator's experience is with African Americans from the south but the Jim Crow accents she used were awful. MacDuffie also has a particularly hard time doing children without making them seem peevish and whiny. I prefer to have books read without fake voices for each part. When the narrator assigns an attitude to a part, she is deciding how we accept each character. James sounds like Uncle Tom with a mouthful of peanuts. Cat sounds like a 12 year old Valley Girl. Even Georgia, the main character, sounds like a young girl with less than a full deck of cards. Please, no more bad interpretations. We want to listen, but we are not attending a bad play.
If this book had been read in a straightforward way, I would have rated it higher.

narration issues

The book is OK. The narration is not so great. In particular, the voices of the two black characters are bizarre and, to me, grating. The voices don't fit what we know about the characters.

Surprised

The book kind of grew on me for the first 3/4 of the book - a "comfortable" read (listen) and no heavy action. But the ending was so wrong (not what happened but the way it happened) - and from a medical point of view - inaccurate. I just couldn't believe what I was hearing. That kind of ruined it for me.

Sad.

I rarely give up on a book. This one just drove me to throw it over and to look for something else. Honestly, I'm not sure how it got published in the first place. Have editors been decommissioned to the point that an entire book can be made up of trite cliche'd phrases?

I love to knit. I hate this book.

Could have done without that downer!

For me the ending ruined this book. It was going along at a 4 star pace, as an enjoyable read, about different woman, all friends, traveling different interesting journeys in life....then the last quarter of the book came along....totally ruined whatever redeeming qualities the book had. I'll say no more, so as not to ruin it for anyone, but if you like an even somewhat "feel good" story, you might not want to read this. Totally a downer ending.

So-so

I'm probably not even half-way through with this book but the characters seem fairly predictable and the story is so-so. I agree with another reviewer that Dakota seems like a much younger child than a 12 year-old. What grates on my nerves is the underlying and subtle liberal agenda that is the purpose of this book. I read books for entertainment - not as a vehicle for political opinions. After listening to this book for a while, I completely understand why Julia Roberts picked it for a movie.

On a last note, it's mildly entertaining although like another reviewer wrote, I'm really not invested in what happens to any of the characters.

Love/Hate Relationship

I really enjoyed the first 2/3 of the book. THen the bottom fell out and the last third was so depressing I wondered what was the author thinking? Surely she would know that few of us would pick up another of her books with such a horrible ending. IF I want to read horrible endings, I read the newspaper!

The Friday Night Knitting Club

The language was terrible. I was looking for a clean fiction and this came up as a recommendation. I threw the cds in the garbage.