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The Wednesday Sisters

by Meg Waite Clayton

The Wednesday Sisters Cover

ISBN13: 9780345502827
ISBN10: 0345502825
Condition: Standard
Dustjacket: Standard
All Product Details

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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

Friendship, loyalty, and love lie at the heart of Meg Waite Claytons 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 womens 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.

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)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Review:

"Richly intelligent, deeply felt and incandescently original, Clayton's book is a rhapsodic story of female friendship set against wildly changing times and mores. Not only is the book heartbreaking, funny, and undeniably smart, but truly, this is the kind of book you don't just want to pass on to all your friends. You have to." Caroline Leavitt, author of Girls in Trouble

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About the Author

Meg Waite Clayton is the author of The Language of Light, a finalist for the Bellwether Prize. Her stories and essays have appeared in Runners World, Writers Digest, and literary magazines. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School and was a Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers Conference. She lives in Palo Alto, California, with her husband and their two sons.

What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 2 comments:

B&b ex libris, March 1, 2009 (view all comments by B&b ex libris)
Five unlikely women meet at the park, they are all so different, and yet they are all in the same place. They need friends, they need to lean to define themselves for more than just their roles as mother, daughter, wife. The sisters, who are not actually sisters at all, and don't meet on Wednesday anymore, learn though difficulties that their friendship will stand the test of time, hardship and misunderstandings. It takes place in the 60's when women are learning to ask questions, to speak up and to take charge.


I have seen The Wednesday Sisters raved about on blogs over months and months. I can now say that I think every woman should read The Wednesday Sisters. It is not just, "oh, that was a good book, I liked it" it is " I will remember that book for the rest of my life as a powerful portrayal of relationships, love, difficulty and beating the odds". I am so glad I gave it a shot. I cried, laughed, cried, laughed and did it over and over.

Reading the Wednesday Sisters is really more like hanging out with a group of real women, ladies who care about each other, and work through their differences. This book is just a cut above, it is actually the reason I came up with my Happy Chicken award in the first place!! If you have seen this one around, and have been holding out, know that you really are doing yourself a huge disservice.
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(4 of 7 readers found this comment helpful)
Bookwomyn, August 31, 2008 (view all comments by Bookwomyn)
I'd call "Wednesday Sisters" intelligent chick lit ... It has some bits of the ordinary and chick-lit-light but also enough depth of character development and inventive story-line to keep it readable.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780345502827
Author:
Clayton, Meg Waite
Publisher:
Ballantine Books
Subject:
Literary
Subject:
Housewives
Subject:
Female friendship
Subject:
Domestic fiction
Copyright:
Publication Date:
June 2008
Binding:
Hardcover
Grade Level:
General/trade
Language:
English
Pages:
288
Dimensions:
9.28x6.48x1.03 in. 1.10 lbs.

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The Wednesday Sisters Used Hardcover
0 stars - 0 reviews
$5.95 In Stock
Product details 288 pages Ballantine Books - English 9780345502827 Reviews:
"Publishers Weekly Review" by , "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)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
"Review" by , "Richly intelligent, deeply felt and incandescently original, Clayton's book is a rhapsodic story of female friendship set against wildly changing times and mores. Not only is the book heartbreaking, funny, and undeniably smart, but truly, this is the kind of book you don't just want to pass on to all your friends. You have to."
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