In The Wednesday Sisters, by Meg Waite Clayton, we meet five young housewives in the Palo Alto, California of 1967: Frankie (our narrator), Linda, Kath, Allie and Brett. When our story begins, only Linda and Kath know one another, but soon all five are frequenting the park near their homes, watching their children and chatting. Eventually it becomes apparent that all of them like to read, and a few of them have deeply buried literary aspirations. Linda dares them into becoming a writing group, and the Wednesday Sisters are born. Over the course of the next five years, we follow the five women as they struggle with everything from sexism, racism, cancer, marital troubles, and their writing.

The Wednesday Sisters is not a type of book I'm normally drawn to, but the author - Meg Waite Clayton - is a regular here on LibraryThing, so I was intrigued about her book. I requested it from the library over six months ago, and I just received it this weekend, so there's no doubt it's popular. And, although I did find it a quick, fairly enjoyable read, this is still not the type of book for me. I wouldn't quite call it chick lit, but it's definitely a book aimed straight at women. I enjoyed the exploration of the late 60's, early 70's from a housewife's point of view, and I appreciated that Clayton didn't try to make all of her characters fit into an expectation that all women of that time must have been feminists - like any intelligent women, their feelings about feminism were more complicated than that. However, I did feel that Clayton tried to fit too much into the book. Each character - except the narrator - had a major problem, making it seem as if Clayton wanted to ensure she illustrated all the issues of the day. And unfortunately, because there were so many "issues", they all seemed to be somewhat glossed over, as if we needed to hurry to get to the next one. ( )

I very much liked this story of a group of women who gather together as a group every week to support one another in both their efforts as writers, and their daily lives as wives and mothers. It covers a period of time in the late sixties and early seventies, which is when I was in high school, so all of the cultural and historical references resonated with me. ( )

Women, Writing, Friendships, 1960s ( )

This is a great novel about friendship and the difference between what people considered to tribulations. I found it to be a rather quick read since I found myself attached to the characters and wanting to know what happened to them next. ( )

A nice,gentle story that is written with such love. This doesn't appear to be much of a story on the whole, but once you get to know these characters, you will really enjoy it. It reminded me a lot of books like the YAYA Sisters and The Help, but I enjoyed this one much more than The Help. This is another one of those books that sneaks up on you. You won't realize how much you enjoyed it until you put it down. ( )