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The Author on Her Work
This novel is very special to me. A few years ago I was afraid I would never be able to write again. For my entire life, reading and writing were ways to work out what I felt, what I worried about, what I feared, what I hoped for. Then on April 18, 2002, my five-year-old daughter, Grace, died suddenly from a virulent form of strep. As an added insult, when I lost Grace I also lost my ability to use words. I couldn't read and I couldn't write. Letters didn't come together to make words; sentences did not make sense. I couldn't concentrate. I couldn't focus.
Almost two years later, the literary journal Tin House sent out a request to writers for submissions for their theme issue on lying. That night—I was unable to sleep well and was often up walking around the house at all hours—an essay came to me fully developed on the lies about grief. I sat down and wrote it, and Tin House published it.
That essay opened the door back to writing for me. During that time when I wasn't reading or writing, I learned how to knit. Knitting, I believe, saved my life. But it also introduced me to a new world of yarn and colors and textures and of people. Sitting in various knitting circles, I slowly learned that knitting had rescued other women too. Bad marriages, illness, addiction—knitting gave comfort and even hope through life's trials.
Once I began to write again, a novel about women in a knitting circle began to take shape. The old adage "Write what you know" is true, but I like the writer Grace Paley's version even better: "Write what you don't know about what you know." With that in mind, I began to read books about knitting history, knitting poetry, knitting everything! I gave my protagonist, Mary, the loss of her only child, and then surrounded her with women who, while teaching her to knit, also tell her their own stories of love and loss and recovery.
The women in this fictitious knitting circle became as real to me as those strangers I sat knitting with after I lost Grace. Each of their stories is told in their own voice, and each story moves Mary along in her grieving process.
This novel is important to me as a writer, as a woman, as a mother, and as a knitter. I hope you find comfort and hope—and even knitting tips!—as you read The Knitting Circle.
Discussion Questions
1. "Time heals all wounds." So goes an old saying. How does time affect the process of mourning as witnessed in the lives of the women in The Knitting Circle?
2. What is it about knitting that makes the activity so therapeutic?
3. Describe the different reactions to loss experienced by the various characters in the novel. What do they hold in common? What makes each individual's situation unique?
4. Mary frequently reacts to others with feelings of envy and bitterness at their good fortune, from Beth to Jessica. What insecurities on Mary's part are revealed in her interactions with other characters in the novel?
5. Is Mary too self-indulgent when it comes to emerging from her grief?
6. Describe the importance of forgiveness in the healing processes of the characters in The Knitting Circle.
7. Why does it take so long for Mamie to open up to her daughter about her earlier difficulties in life? Is she entirely to blame for her reticence, or is Mary partly responsible as well?
8. How is Mary's troubled relationship with Mamie manifested in her grief over Stella?
9. How does Mary and Dylan's understanding of the bond of marriage evolve over the course of the novel?
10. Why doesn't Mary's relationship with Connor last?
11. In times of distress, Mary's impulse is often to avoid others. What is the appeal of not discussing our emotional difficulties?
12. How important is it to the women at Big Alice's Sit and Knit that theirs is a female-dominated knitting circle?
13. How are the boundaries of family redefined for Mary in the years after Stella's death?
14. Toward the end of The Knitting Circle, how is Mary's involvement with Holly's baby different from what it might have been at the novel's beginning?
15. Does Mary's recounting of Stella's death before her friends signify her full recovery from her loss? What more healing remains to be done after the novel's close?
Book Club Activism > Read The Knitting Circle and Get Involved.
As I have visited bookstores and knitting stores across the country, I have learned that there is a lovely intersection of knitters and readers. Knitters have even told me that they knit while they listen to books on tape so that they don’t have to choose between their favorite passions.
I began knitting in the fall of 2002, six months after my five year old daughter Grace died suddenly from a virulent form of strep. Before Grace died, reading was my escape, my comfort, my refuge. But in the months following Grace’s death, I found that reading was at first impossible due to the overwhelming grief I experienced and the way that eroded my ability to concentrate; later, reading no longer worked as solace or distraction, for the first time in my life. And so I knit. And knit and knit and knit. So many scarves that a friend said to me: “Ann, you know how at a certain point each summer you start to hide from the people you know who grow zucchini? That’s how we feel about your scarves.”
I got the message. On the day that my husband and I received our referral to adopt a baby in China, I brought together my two loves: reading and knitting. Our daughter Annabelle is wearing a hand knit pink sweater in that first picture we received of her. Imagine my shock when I looked at the pictures of all ten babies in our travel group and saw that they were all wearing the same pink sweater! The orphanage had one “good” sweater for hundreds of babies.
After we brought Annabelle home, I invited knitting groups, reading groups, and friends to contribute pink sweaters to send to Annabelle’s orphanage. The response was overwhelming, and now, two years after it began, Annabelle’s Pink Sweater Drive has provided beautiful hand knit sweaters to over two hundred babies. Those sweaters have I LOVE YOU knit into every stitch.
Sweaters to warm babies, hats for preemies in hospitals, blankets for families in war torn countries, socks for patients receiving chemotherapy. Donations of hand knit items are useful, yes. But the time and care that it takes to knit a sweater or a hat sends an even stronger message. That I LOVE YOU in every stitch can be felt around the world. Your book group can make a difference and here’s how:
Send a pink sweater to Annabelle’s orphanage: Loudi Social Welfare Institute; Loudi, Hunan Province, The People’s Republic of China.
Or knit hats for the babies in the Intensive Care Unit at the hospital that took care of Grace: Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, Hasbro Children’s Hospital, Providence, Rhode Island, 02903. Please include a note that says you are sending this in honor of Grace Adrain.
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