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Summary
Summary
Friendship, loyalty, and love lie at the heart of Meg Waite Clayton's beautifully written, poignant, and sweeping novel of five women who, over the course of four decades, come to redefine what it means to be family. For thirty-five years, Frankie, Linda, Kath, Brett, and Ally have met every Wednesday at the park near their homes in Palo Alto, California. Defined when they first meet by what their husbands do, the young homemakers and mothers are far removed from the Summer of Love that has enveloped most of the Bay Area in 1967. These "Wednesday Sisters" seem to have little in common: Frankie is a timid transplant from Chicago, brutally blunt Linda is a remarkable athlete, Kath is a Kentucky debutante, quiet Ally has a secret, and quirky, ultra-intelligent Brett wears little white gloves with her miniskirts. But they are bonded by a shared love of both literature--Fitzgerald, Eliot, Austen, du Maurier, Plath, and Dickens--and the Miss America Pageant, which they watch together every year. As the years roll on and their children grow, the quintet forms a writers circle to express their hopes and dreams through poems, stories, and, eventually, books. Along the way, they experience history in the making: Vietnam, the race for the moon, and a women's movement that challenges everything they have ever thought about themselves, while at the same time supporting one another through changes in their personal lives brought on by infidelity, longing, illness, failure, and success. Humorous and moving, The Wednesday Sisters is a literary feast for book lovers that earns a place among those popular works that honor the joyful, mysterious, unbreakable bonds between friends.
Author Notes
Meg Waite Clayton is an American author, and a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School. She has written for the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Runner's World and public radio, frequently on the particular challenges that women face.
Her first novel, The Language of Light, was a finalist for the Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction (now the PEN/Bellwether). She has also written The Race for Paris, The Wednesday Daughters, The Four Ms. Bradwells, and The Wednesday Sisters.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In her light second novel, Clayton chronicles a group of mothers who convene in a Palo Alto park and share their changing lives as the late 1960s counterculture blossoms around them. Linda is a runner who tracks women's progress at the Olympics. Brett has one eye on the moon, where men are living out her astronaut dreams. Southern belle Kath isn't convinced she has dreams outside the confines of her marriage (but she's open to persuasion), while quiet Ally only hopes for what the other women already have: a child. Frankie, a Chicago transplant who has followed her computer genius husband to a nascent Silicon Valley, is the story's narrator and the ladies' ringleader, inspiring them all to follow her dream of becoming a writer. They write in moments snatched from their household chores and share their stories in the park. Though the narration and story lines are so syrupy they verge on hokey, Clayton ably conjures the era's details and captures the women's changing roles in a world that expects little of them. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
A story of female friendship in Palo Alto evokes the '60s, including the stirrings of second-wave feminism. Beauty-pageant protests, inequality for female athletes, daughters denied educational opportunities and many other not-so-subtle reminders of how far we've come pepper Clayton's predictable second novel (The Language of Light, 2003), which brings together Frankie, Linda, Kath, Brett and Ally in a Californian park in 1967. Their friendship inspires a writing group, The Wednesday Sisters Writing Society, and also a support network as crises come and go: There are Ally's miscarriages; Linda's health scare; Kath's marriage problems. The women share confessions, rifts and revelations which edge them toward greater achievement, while behind them a stream of iconic '60s moments--the Olympic Black Power salute; the moon landing--and books (Love Story, The French Lieutenant's Woman) add period flavor. Characterized mainly by their problems, the friends inevitably undergo life changes by the end of the story: Ally finally gives birth; Linda runs a mini-marathon but suffers a medical setback; two-timed Kath starts a career; Brett writes an impressive novel; and narrator Frankie, who also publishes a novel, finally gets a college education. Formulaic. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Set during the summer of 1968 in Palo Alto, California, Clayton's novel chronicles the lives of five women who conduct a weekly writing group at their neighborhood park. Frankie is an unassuming midwesterner whose inventor husband brings them to the burgeoning Silicon Valley. She meets Linda, the all-American athlete; Kath, the southern belle; Brett, the enigmatic scientist; and Ally, the shy bohemian. The women share their feelings about marriage and motherhood and together mourn the assassination of Robert Kennedy and watch as man walks on the moon and feminists protest the Miss America pageant. They support one another through illness, infertility, racism, and infidelity and encourage each other through publishers' rejections. Readers will be swept up by this moving novel about female friendship and enthralled by the recounting of a pivotal year in American history as seen through these young women's eyes.--Walker, Aleksandra Copyright 2008 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Verdict: Clayton's well-developed characters embody the best and the worst qualities in all women. They are endearing, infuriating, and real, so much so that you won't want to say good-bye to them when this engaging book ends. Background: In the spirit of lady lit classics like Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, The Hot Flash Club, and The Knitting Circle, this book celebrates the loyalty and love that lays at the heart of women's friendships. Frankie, Linda, Brett, Ally, and Kath are young marrieds when they meet in 1967. Their lives are rooted in convention even though the world is in chaos, what with men walking on the moon, feminists protesting the Miss America Pageant, and war raging in Vietnam. But the Wednesday Sisters, as they come to call themselves, share a love of writing and literature that helps them transcend the hardships of their daily lives, which include infertility, adultery, illness, prejudice, and failure.--Jeanne Bogino, New Lebanon Lib., NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.