Title: The Wednesday Sisters
Author: Meg Waite Clayton
Finished: June 1, 2008
Pages: 284
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Publish Year: 2008
ISBN: 0345502825
My first Early Reviewers Book.
A story of five friends in the 60s living their everyday housewives life, come together in the park every Wednesday with their kids and through conversation learn they all enjoy reading books, among other things. Clayton goes an amazing job of creating a unique set of characters, each with their own defining characteristics and compliments. Similar to the them of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, the story follows the women through this distinct period in their lives when women were supposed to stay home with the children and cook, instead of working and helping make money for the family. Even with the high demand to meet the needs of their husbands, each one has their own demons to battle. As a reader you see the struggles that a woman faced in the 60s when everything seemed taboo (ie. sex before marriage, pregnancy before marriage, cancer, infidelity, divorce, infertility, race, women’s rights, voting, war, etc.)
What I found most interesting about the story, having not been alive for any of these battles, was how amazingly Clayton portrayed the inner struggles of each woman through the point of view of only one of the women, yet the reader still feels everything the other women feel, the same emotional heartbreak and happiness even though we aren’t even getting their specific point of view.
As a reader, you could almost assume you’re going to hear all about these women’s lives throughout the book, but the focus remains on their time period which is most crucial to their future, even while including small statements from the narrator about what the future will be. Everything is tied together in a nice little bow in the end leaving the reader fulfilled and in love with each character for her flaws as well as her strengths.
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