Mary Baxter loses her five-year-old daughter to meningitis. Mary and her husband, Dylan, struggle to preserve their marriage, but the memories are too painful, and the healing too difficult. Mary can't focus on her job as a writer for a local newspaper, and she bitterly resents her emotionally and geographically distant mother, who relocated to Mexico years earlier. Still, it's at her mother's urging that Mary joins a knitting circle and discovers that knitting soothes without distracting. The structure of the story quickly becomes obvious: each knitter has a tragedy that she'll reveal to Mary. There's a lot of knitting, both actual and metaphorical. This novel, though well-written, was too contrived in the way each person in the knitting club called on Mary to reveal their pasts.

Moving drama with many humorous touches; 2-character play with mature women roles (one is 90 years old, the other is somewhere between 32-54) who, as strangers, reveal their secrets to each other while the elder woman is waiting to die; the relationship between the two women reminded me of the central characters in "Fried Green Tomatoes" or a gender reversal of Tuesdays with Morrie.

An absorbing tale of three suburban couples and their failed marriages. There's Sarah, who was a bisexual feminist in college but has now married Richard, 20 years her senior, to escape a dead-end job; Todd, a handsome, stay-at-home dad who can't bring himself to care about repeatedly failing the bar exam; and Larry, a former cop who retired at 33 after mistakenly killing a 13-year-old boy. All of their lives collide with unexpected consequences the summer a convicted child molester moves into the neighborhood. Sarah and Todd have an extended affair, and Larry becomes obsessed with harassing the sex offender, while Richard turns into a devoted member of the online "Slutty Kay" fan club. Absorbing and the movie, which follows he book almost exactly, is as well.

Loved the movie - loved the book

Considered an American classic- I believe it was one of the fist books to discuss women and their freedom in marriage and family. On one hand, she seems like a horrible and inconsistent mother and wife. On the other, I can't help but sympathize with her pain, boredom, and rebellion at the life she had been led to chose. Her husband was very controlling and not particularly nice to her, expecting her to do everything his way.
Society did the same thing. I wanted to applaud her as she broke free from them and found her own way and her own love.
But ultimately, what did her end gain her? Suicide was the only way for her to story to end, which made it so helpless feeling.

This collection of short stories seemed quite different from other chicklit that I've read, in that none of it is light romance with happy endings. It was much darker and more involved. Some had hopeful endings- few had actual happy endings- and some were sad. All were bittersweet at best. Some were hard to listen to- stories about girls who never get over their fathers leaving or some jerk who left them. I just wanted to shake most of them and tell them to get it together and get over it.
Overall, a pretty strong collection of stories about women.

wierd compilation of stories that are disconnected. Not bad, just not really good.

Originally published on October 27, 2007 at Bits of Existence.

I keep picking up Jennifer Weiner’s books because even while they have yet to captivate me in the same way that Jane Green’s novels do, I still think they’re good books. I picked up The Guy Not Taken before my trip to see Johnathan in August. It stayed in my luggage, untouched because I napped rather than spending much time at reading.

The first thing that struck me while reading this series of short stories is that divorce is a heavily used theme, as is parental abandonment. I think in almost every story, some form of one or both themes manifests itself. I was comforted to see Weiner make comments about this very same thing in an interview that was printed in the back. Apparently most of these stories were concocted during her early college years, which occurred just after her own father left the family.

I think, inexplicably, my favorite series of short stories were those which were the most clearly autobiographical - those of Josie, Nicki, Jon and their mother. Even while Nicki was whiny and sour, Jon was sullen and Josie seemed to have very little backbone of her own, always afraid of making a wrong step, I found the family endearing. Throughout the whole thing, it’s clear they care about each other, to some degree. They also seem to be very bad at showing it. I really liked reading the trilogy of short stories about them that were interspersed throughout.

My least favorite had to be the story of Dora getting robbed in a manner of speaking by Amber and Dawn, two girls from New Jersey. None of the characters jumped out at me as characters with whom I could identify or at least find endearing features. It seemed a poor ending to a series of short stories that did keep me reading. I think the novel would have best ended with the last of the three autobiographical stories, which seemed to have the most realistic and final of the endings.

On the whole, it was a nice novel. Not a great one, but a series of short stories cannot be expected to compete with a longer, more cohesive novel. Still, it was a nice read. I look forward to the time when I have the money to pick up Little Earthquakes, which I believe is the last of her novels that I have not yet read.

a hairdresser from Michigan's contribution to Aghan women's independence and pride- highly recommended. a quick read

I was interested in this autobiography because the author is working to create opportunities for women in Arab countries, working within the confines of traditional Muslim culture while stretching them a bit. She teaches the women about taking responsibility, creativity, and how to run a business. Some women are then kept as teachers, while others go on to open their own salons.
Many of the stories are heartbreaking. Some seem just ridiculous- like the fact that she married an Afghan man without knowing really why or how she was doing it. And she often tries to work against the culture in potentially dangerous ways.
I was disappointed to find that she didn't change the names in her book and now many of the women featured in here are in danger. That seems unnecessarily thoughtless and cruel from someone who purports to want to save these women.
I do like the idea of using traditional cultural values, like women's beauty, to give women power in Muslim culture.

It might be worth reading if only for a small view into cultural insensitivity and the lack of reflection that plagues our society. However, one can only marvel at Rodriguez' inability to reflect on the danger in which she places her former friends in Kabul by publishing this memoir. Her veracity is suspect in many passages (a solitary woman crossing the Hindu Kush without proper documents) and I'm astonished at the author's refusal to reflect on how her beauty school perpetuates the subjugation of women in Afghanistan. Written in a folksy tone that only heightens her cloddish behavior, it's hard to be a patient read.

The book starts out interesting, but very quickly becomes all about the author. Neither the author nor the ghost writer are strong writers. None of the side stories or characters are finished or ever mentioned again.

Taking historical documents (mostly newspaper clippings), Crew has generated as true as story as she can around the facts and woven a fairly solid story. However, it sometimes lacks in pizazz perhaps? Perhaps it is best as a young adult book, though the topics were pretty adult.

Interesting, and not bad for a quick read.

I always like Oregon History with a story. Easy read.

Yes, Phillippa Gregory reeled me in again! This book picks up where The Queen's Fool left off. Queen Mary dies, Elizabeth is crowned, the Dudley's fall and rise, and Hannah Green even makes a cameo.