The Wednesday Sisters
by Meg Waite Clayton
Ballantine Books, 2008, 304 pp.
The Wednesday Sisters is the endearing story of five young women in 1960's California, transplants from around the country, meeting by chance in the neighborhood park. Each woman comes from a different background and brings a unique backstory to the group. They share a love of the Miss America pageant, their families and books. A chance remark leads to the start of a writing group and becomes a springboard for the bonds of friendships to form. NASA, the Women's Movement, questions of race and religion, anti-war protests all form the historical context in which the five mature as women, as mothers and wives, and as writers.
This is the third "chick-lit" novel I have read in just a little over twice as many months that uses a relatively recent era as it's backdrop. Each of them used pop culture to represent the time period...songs, events, clothing styles, fads, etc. One of them used pop iconography to such an extreme that it distracted the reader from the storyline and called attention to itself in a kind of irritating pop culture name-dropping. In the second, the story was a bit more evident but the pop culture references were still pesky and overabundant. In The Wednesday Sisters, though, the historical references work to both inform and propel the story forward. The characters have depth and voice and even though I was not immediately drawn to all of them, I was drawn in by their stories and I wanted to know more about each of them. Most of all, I suppose, I wanted to know why Brett always wears white gloves. But then, didn't everybody?
I would recommend this as a great book club pick!
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