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The Knitting Circle: The uplifting and heartwarming novel you need to read this year
Ann Hood
Come on in and join the knitting circle – it might just save your life…Spinning yarns, weaving tales, mending lives…Every Wednesday a group of women gathers at Alice's knitting shop. Little do they know that each of their secrets will be revealed and that together they will learn so much more than patterns…Grieving Mary needs to fill the empty days after the death of her only child.Glamorous Scarlet is the life and soul of any party. But beneath her beaming smile lurks heartache.Sculptor Lulu seems too cool to live in the suburbs. Why has she fled New York's bright lights?Model housewife Beth never has a hair out of place. But her perfect world is about to fall apart….Irish-born Ellen wears the weight of the world on her shoulders but not her heart on her sleeve. What is she hiding?As the weeks go by, under mysterious Alice's watchful eye, an unlikely friendship forms. Secrets are revealed and pacts made. Then tragedy strikes, and each woman must learn to face her own past in order to move on…This heart-breaking and uplifting novel is the perfect book club read, for fans of Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine and The Keeper of Lost ThingsPraise for Ann Hood‘Just like a woolly jumper, this book is cosy and perfect for long winter nights! … truly heartwarming.’ Closer Magazine‘A heartbreaker’ Vanity Fair‘An engrossing storyteller … works its magic.’ Sue Monk Kidd, author of The Secret Life of Bees‘What a gift for Ann Hood, who suffered a loss nearly identical to Mary Baxter's, to have made of her grief.’ Newsday‘Memorably stirring and authentic.’ Los Angeles Times Book Review‘Ann Hood writes with the ease of a born storyteller.’ Chicago Tribune
ANN HOOD
The Knitting Circle
Copyright (#u52613115-23d8-5d00-aed2-eee46de1b433)
HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers in 2008
This ebook edition published by HarperCollins Publishers in 2017
Copyright © Ann Hood 2008
Cover layout design © debbieclementdesign.com (http://debbieclementdesign.com) 2017
Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com (http://Shutterstock.com)
Ann Hood asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9781847560100
Ebook Edition © September 2008 ISBN: 9780007281848
Version: 2017-08-30
Dedication (#u52613115-23d8-5d00-aed2-eee46de1b433)
For knitters
For friends
Contents
Cover (#u5aeab434-f77e-53a4-bf43-81afa5322840)
Title Page (#ucdb86097-1730-5ec1-9a5e-c3267f20d269)
Copyright (#uc232e092-99d6-5190-96ac-1c878dbbeecd)
Dedication (#u41b79c8e-36b4-5a00-accc-0de37999cf9e)
Prologue (#ua6c1a667-620c-5398-85ab-b99ce42abe92)
Part One: Casting On (#u03d4c689-ab60-565a-b99a-96ab6bc0cbf9)
Chapter One: Mary (#u3417ea4e-bcfa-5179-897b-aa7e5752379b)
Chapter Two: The Knitting Circle (#u2b41535f-51be-51c5-aa3e-1656fe29d75f)
Part Two: K2, P2 (#u954be6b1-05b4-585f-b07a-d7e265f7cb04)
Chapter Three: Scarlet (#u7cff62a7-5c73-57d5-be56-0303944d0298)
Chapter Four: The Knitting Circle (#ud62cc4bc-db48-5cd2-afa7-aaa57cf4bff1)
Part Three: Knit Two Together (K2Tog) (#ud01f04eb-a4d7-50a3-b08e-5a8c9b8175d3)
Chapter Five: Lulu (#ud76fe202-a927-5fce-8948-2a8e75bc2fe7)
Chapter Six: The Knitting Circle (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Four: Socks (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven: Ellen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight: The Knitting Circle (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Five: A Good Knitter (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine: Harriet (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten: The Knitting Circle (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Six: Sit And Knit (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven: Alice (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve: The Knitting Circle (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Seven: Mothers And Children (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen: Beth (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen: The Knitting Circle (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Eight: Knitting (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen: Roger (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen: The Knitting Circle (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Nine: Common Suffering (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen: Mamie (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen: The Knitting Circle (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Ten: Casting Off (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen: Mary (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty: The Knitting Circle (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)
The Knitting Circle (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue (#u52613115-23d8-5d00-aed2-eee46de1b433)
Daughter, I have a story to tell you. I have wanted to tell it to you for a very long time. But unlike Babar or Eloise or any of the other stories that you loved to hear, this one is not funny. This one is not clever. It is simply true. 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.
PART ONE (#u52613115-23d8-5d00-aed2-eee46de1b433)
Casting On (#u52613115-23d8-5d00-aed2-eee46de1b433)
To knit, you have to have the stitches on oneneedle. ‘Casting on’ is the term for makingthe foundation row of stitches. Once youhave cast on, you are ready to knit. —NANCY J. THOMAS AND ILANA RABINOWITZ, A Passion for Knitting
1 (#u52613115-23d8-5d00-aed2-eee46de1b433)
Mary (#u52613115-23d8-5d00-aed2-eee46de1b433)
Mary showed up empty-handed.
“I don’t have anything with me,” she said, and she opened her arms to indicate their emptiness.
The woman standing before her was called Big Alice, but there was nothing big about her. She stood five feet tall, with a tiny waist, short silver hair, and gray eyes the color of a sky right before a storm. Big Alice had her slight body wedged between the worn wooden door to the shop and Mary herself.
“This isn’t really my kind of thing,” Mary said apologetically.
The woman nodded. “I know,” she said, stepping back so that the door swung open wide. “I can’t tell you how many people have stood right where you’re standing and said that exact thing.” Her voice was soft, British.
“Well,” Mary said, because she didn’t know what else to say.
She never did know what to say these days, or what to do. This was in September, five months after her daughter Stella had died. That stunned disbelief had ebbed slightly, but the horrible noises in her head had grown. They were hospital noises, doctors’ voices, and Stella’s own five-year-old voice saying Mama. Sometimes Mary imagined she really heard her daughter calling out to her and her heart would squeeze tight on itself.
“Come on in,” Big Alice said.
Mary followed her into the shop. Alice wore a gray tweed skirt, a white oxford shirt, a gold cardigan, and pearls. Although the top half of her looked like a schoolmarm, she had crazy-colored striped socks on her feet and pink chenille bedroom slippers with red rhinestone cherries across the tops.
“I’ve got the gout,” Big Alice explained, lifting one slippered foot. Then she added, “I guess you know I’m Alice.”
“Yes,” Mary said.
Like everything else, Mary could easily have forgotten the woman’s name. She’d written it on one of the hundreds of Post-its scattered around the house like confetti after a party. But, like all of the phone numbers and dates and directions, the paper with Alice written on it was gone. Outside the store, however, a wooden sign read Big Alice’s Sit and Knit, and when Mary saw it she had remembered: Alice.
Mary stopped and got her bearings. These days this was always necessary, even in familiar places. In her own kitchen she would stop what she was doing and look around, take stock. Oh, she would say to herself, noting that the television was off instead of tuned to Sagwa, the Chinese Cat; the bowl Stella had made at Claytime with its carefully painted and placed polka dots was empty of the sliced cucumbers or mound of blueberries it used to hold; the cutout hearts with crayoned Ilove you’s and the construction-paper kite with its pink ribbon tail drooped. Oh, Mary would say, realizing all over again that this was how her kitchen—her life—looked now. Empty and sad.
The shop was small, with creaky wooden floors and baskets and shelves brimming over with yarn. It smelled like sweaters and cedar and Alice’s own citrus scent. There were three rooms: this small one, the room beyond with the cash register and a well-worn couch slipcovered in a pink and red floral pattern, and another larger room with more yarn and a few chairs.
The yarn was beautiful. Mary saw this immediately and touched some as she followed Alice into the next room, letting her fingertips linger a bit over the skeins.
“So,” Alice was saying, “we’ll start you on a scarf.” She held up a finished scarf. Cobalt blue with pale blue tassels. “You like this one?”
“I guess so,” Mary said.
“You don’t like it? You’re frowning.”
“I do. It’s fine. It’s just, I can’t make it. I’m not good with my hands. I flunked home ec. Really, I did.”
Alice turned toward the wall and pulled down some wooden knitting needles.
“A ten-year-old can make that scarf,” she said, a bit impatiently. She handed the needles to Mary.
They felt large and smooth and awkward in her hands. Mary watched as Alice went over to a shelf and grabbed several balls of yarn. The same cobalt blue, and aquamarine, and mauve.
“Which color do you like?” Alice said. She held them out to Mary like an offering.
“The blue, I guess,” Mary said, and the particular blue of Stella’s eyes presented itself in her mind. When she tried to blink it away, she felt tears slide out. She turned her head and wiped her eyes.
“Blue it is,” Alice said, more gently. She pointed to a chair tucked into a corner beneath balls of fat yarn. “Sit down and I’ll teach you how to knit.”
Mary laughed. “Such optimism,” she said.
“A woman came in here two weeks ago,” Alice said, dropping into an overstuffed chair and sticking her feet up on a small footstool with a needlepoint cover. “She’d never knit a thing, and she’s made three of these scarves. That’s how easy it is.”
Mary had driven forty miles to this store, even though there was a knitting shop less than a mile from her house. As she navigated the unfamiliar back roads, it had seemed foolish, coming so far, to knit of all things. But sitting here with this stranger who knew nothing about her, or about what had happened, with these unfamiliar needles in her sweaty hands, Mary knew somehow that it was the right thing to do.
“It’s just a series of slipknots,” Alice said. She held up a long tail of the yarn and demonstrated.
