Specifications
LaZebnik, Claire Scovell, Knitting Under the Influence,
5 Spot Press, New York, 2006.
Reading
This was started on January 24, 2007, and finished on February 13,
2007.
Review
This book is by the same author as Same as it Never was,
which I liked.
This book is somewhat different. For
one thing, it is really not a novel, it is three intertwined
novels. Three women, Sari, Kathleen, and Lucy, who meet once a week
for a knitting club. Each is the protagonist of one of the novels.
Also, these are romance novels.
Sari has a job treating autistic
children. One of her children belongs to Jason Smith, who she knew
in high school. He was pretty "hot" then, but he teased her
older brother who was autistic, so she decides to "get even."
The entire novel is about her obsessing on trying to hate Jason, but
she cannot ignore the fact that he is still very attractive. He is
also in the process of divorcing his wife - she couldn't get along
with children, so he stayed home to raise their autistic kid, and she
just moved out. He couldn't get her interested in actually helping
raise the children. (Sounds familiar to me.) Eventually, it comes
to a crisis, and Jason finds out that she is avoiding him because of
her brother, so he points out to her that that was years ago, he was
a very insecure high school student at the time. She , however, has
become exactly what she is complaining to him about, to the point
that she actually hurt his son, after really helping him for a while.
As a subplot to this novel, her brother
(Charlie) is at home with their parents, and is autistic. His
mother, however, keeps saying, "This is the way God made him." so
she will not allow Sari to help him. In the end, they kidnap
Charlie, and he becomes able to try for a job in a video store. (His
mother allowed him to watch movies continuously for years.)
Lucy has a job killing rats for
research. She has a boyfriend, James, when the novel starts. James
is in charge of the research she's doing. There is some
anti-research types (one, really) who throws paint at James' car,
etc. Lucy catches her, but doesn't tell James because she doesn't
think James will respond properly - he is a bit of a SOB, thinking
that anyone who doesn't agree with him totally is an idiot.
Therefore, anyone who is religious is an idiot, anyone who owns pets
is an idiot, etc. \
David is Lucy's lab partner. He has
been interested in her, but she hasn't returned the interest because
of James.
The action, then, is Lucy's trying to
stay with James, when they have such obviously different values.
David is there, always, but really doesn't do anything. This all
changes when David gives Lucy a cat (which she names "David," so
there is David the person, and David the cat.). Lucy had said that
she really wanted to be a vet, but research was more to her liking.
David thought having a pet was a compromise. James, then, suggests
that the only use for the pet is to do research, they have a fight
and break up. Meanwhile, David (the person) is very understanding
and supportive of Lucy, so they get together in the end.
Katherine is one of a set of triplets.
The other two, Christa and Kelly) are identical twins, so Kathrine is
the odd one out. She looks different - is much taller, and looks
like her father. The others have a job in Hollywood because they
look alike - only their immediate family can tell them apart.
Katherine works for them at the start of the novel - actually, the
novel starts when she quits. She gets set up in an apartment by Sam,
who one of the friends puts her in touch with. She gets a job, which
is arranged by Sam.
She also announces that she's going to
marry someone who is rich, so she can live the life she's used to
with out the twins. Her boss has a son, Kevin, so she makes a play
for him. It is successful, so he goes out with her, and eventually
asks her to marry him. That is, he takes her to their private house
in Hawaii, then asks her to marry him there (no waiting period),
Kevin invites Sari and Lucy, who talk her out of it, as she is quite
open about the fact that she doesn't really like him. (Although
Kevin seems decent, other than being a mamas boy.)
Meanwhile, she has a relationship with
Sam, in that he advises her, feeds her (she can't cook), teaches her
how to cook, allows her to watch his TV, etc. She didn't buy any
furniture for her apartment other than some blowup mattresses. The
apartment is available to her because someone else lived there, and
there is a legal situation which needs to clear before it can be
rented, so she could be kicked out at any time.
Sam, meanwhile, is still going out with
his former wife regularly. He just says he enjoys being with her.
Katherine is a bit surprised at this (so would I be).
In the end, after Katherine has jilted
Kevin, she starts to see Sam (who is quite a bit older than she). It
turns out that Sam is even richer than Kevin ever would be, and he is
a bit concerned that she has said she's a gold digger. In the end
they get together, however.
I've written these novels as if they
were totally independent. They are not. Characters from one will
regularly appear in others, and they are all meeting regularly for
knitting.
On one of the knitting meeting, they
really are drunk. Then next meeting, they get their stuff out, and
discover it was a major disaster. That is, one developed a run that
ran through half the project, one didn't switch colors when she
should have, so the band of color was twice as wide as it should have
been. I've forgotten the third, but it was funny.
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