The Knitting Circle: A Novel

by Ann Hood

Mary Baxter's life changed the day her five year old daughter Stella died suddenly of meningitis; she is understandably completely devastated. Months later, her mother suggests that Mary learn to knit and despite her initial reservations, she joins a local knitting group. She is surprised to find comfort in the way the movement of the needles calms her nerves and quiets her mind. Knitting also brings a new circle of friends into Mary's life, friends who also know about great loss and finding solace in knitting. This is a story about friendship between women and the love between mothers and daughters. It is about the love between Mary and Stella as well the complicated relationship between Mary and her own mother, a recovering alcoholic who also lost a young daughter, a sister that Mary never knew. In a beautiful passage, Mary's mother expresses her love for her daughter, a love that she could never show, in a letter that she wrote and kept for many years before finally giving it to Mary. She writes, "Daughter, I have a story to tell you. I have wanted to tell you for a very long time... It is my story, yet I do not have the words to tell it. Instead I pick up my needles and I knit. Every stitch is a letter. A row spells out 'I love you'. I knit 'I love you' into everything I make. Like a prayer or a wish, I send it out to you, hoping you can hear me. Hoping, daughter, that the story I am knitting reaches you somehow. Hoping that my love reaches you somehow." A well written novel that doesn't take the easy way out with an instant, magical cure for Mary's immense grief and sadness. Instead, Mary loses everything she loves most before she can begin to live and love again.