The Wednesday Sisters: A Novel [Hardcover]

Meg Waite Clayton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 17, 2008

Friendship, loyalty, and love lie at the heart of Meg Waite Clayton’s 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 women’s 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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

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)
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From Booklist

Set during the summer of 1968 in Palo Alto, California, Clayton’s novel chronicles the lives of five women who conduct a weekly writing group at their neighborhood park. Frankie is an unassuming midwesterner whose inventor husband brings them to the burgeoning Silicon Valley. She meets Linda, the all-American athlete; Kath, the southern belle; Brett, the enigmatic scientist; and Ally, the shy bohemian. The women share their feelings about marriage and motherhood and together mourn the assassination of Robert Kennedy and watch as man walks on the moon and feminists protest the Miss America pageant. They support one another through illness, infertility, racism, and infidelity—and encourage each other through publishers’ rejections. Readers will be swept up by this moving novel about female friendship and enthralled by the recounting of a pivotal year in American history as seen through these young women’s eyes. --Aleksandra Walker

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books; 2nd edition (June 17, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345502825
• ISBN-13: 978-0345502827
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1 x 9.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (108 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #671,039 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Meg Waite Clayton is the nationally bestselling author of THE FOUR MS. BRADWELLS, THE WEDNESDAY SISTERS, and THE LANGUAGE OF LIGHT, which was a Bellwether Prize finalist. She hosts the blog, 1st Books: Stories of How Writers Get Started, which features award-winning and bestselling authors sharing stories about their paths to writing and publishing, and also blogs on the Huffington Post. Her short stories and essays have been read on public radio and have appeared in commercial and literary print and online magazines. She's a graduate of the University of Michigan and Michigan Law School, and lives with her family in Palo Alto, California. Visit her on the web at www.megwaiteclayton.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

48 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect for Book Clubs, June 17, 2008

By 

Lesa Holstine (Glendale, AZ) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Wednesday Sisters: A Novel (Hardcover)

In a book perfect for book clubs, Meg Waite Clayton tells the story of five young women, wives and mothers, who find each other, and a lifelong friendship, in a children's park in Palo Alto, California. Frankie, Linda, Kath, Brett, and Ally are The Wednesday Sisters, women who support each other in the turbullient, changing years of the late '60s and early '70s.

Mary Frances O'Mara, Frankie, tells the story of five women who share an unspoken dream. When Frankie meets Linda, and then the others, she learns they all love books. Their book discussions eventually turn to a discussion of writing, and a dream no one dares whisper, that of being published someday. So, The Wednesday Sisters are born, when they agree to meet at the picnic tables on Wednesday mornings to write and critique the writing. This honesty about the writing forces them to share other secrets. Over the years, they gradually reveal more to each other. Readers learn early about the death of Linda's mother. But, why does Brett wear white gloves? Each woman will eventually share her deepest fears.

Frankie's voice is the right one to tell the story of five women who grow and change with a changing country. Her story looks back at the early years of lifelong friendship, friendship that grows and reflects changes in the early '70s. The Miss America pageant that links their lives is a perfect vehicle to show the changes in these five women, as well as the country.

I read the first two paragraphs of The Wednesday Sisters, and I knew it would be a wonderful book. Who can resist the second paragraph? "That's us, there in the photograph. Yes, that's me-in one of my chubbier phases, though I suppose one of these days I'll have to face up to the fact that it's the thinner me that's the "phase," not the chubbier one. And going left to right, that's Linda (her hair loose and combed, but then she brought the camera, she was the only one who knew we'd be taking a photograph). Next to her is Ally, pale as ever, and then Kath. And the one in the white gloves in front-the one in the coffin-that's Brett."

Frankie, Linda, Ally, Kath and Brett. It's worthwhile meeting them in The Wednesday Sisters by Meg Waite Clayton.

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "You've come a long way baby", June 21, 2008

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Wednesday Sisters: A Novel (Hardcover)

In the late 1960s the five young mothers meet in Palo Alto at a park. They have plenty in common as they dream of being much more than just a wife and mother while hearing tales of the counter culture and the Summer of Love. The quintet love books especially those they can escape into so they can forget their somewhat tedious lives especially the household chores, but each sees a different role for the lead female characters based on what they dream they wanted.

Linda loves to run with the Olympics her fantasy goal. Brett literally wants to walk on the moon. Kath insists marriage is all she ever desired, but her four new pals with their aspirations make her wonder if there might be something in addition to being wife and mother. Ally, the only one without a child, wants a kid or three. The leader Midwesterner Frankie, who came to California as her husband came here to work at the fledgling computer business, hopes to be come a writer. THE WEDNESDAY SISTERS inspire each other to go after their aspirations and much more even when they seem impossible in a man's only world by writing and sharing their tales.

This historical sisterhood tale is an engaging look at the beginning of the "You've come a long way baby" feminist movement that brought women into many fields previously taboo epitomized by Hilary's run (the next one will go all the way). Each of the five women seems real due to their dreams to be more than identified through their husband and kids. Although their individual writings are too sweet even if they read valid for their place in late 1960s society, fans will enjoy this fine tale as before Sally Ride there was a real Brett out there trying to break out of the box.

Harriet Klausner

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars For anyone who believes in the power of a good book, June 30, 2008

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Wednesday Sisters: A Novel (Hardcover)

"The Wednesday Sisters look like the kind of women who might meet at those fancy coffee shops on University --- we do look that way --- but we're not one bit fancy, and we're not sisters, either. We don't even meet on Wednesdays anymore, although we did at the beginning."

So begins Meg Waite Clayton's lyrical novel of the friendships forged among five different women who come together by chance. In the tumultuous years of the late 1960s, many females were involved in protest marches opposing the war or fighting for the women's movement. But in suburban Palo Alto, five ladies came together primarily because of their children. Being a mother is the first thing they had in common when they met at Pardee Park in those early days. Soon after, Frankie, Linda, Kath, Brett and Ally discovered that they all shared a love of books and a secret wish to write themselves. For Frankie --- a recent transplant from Chicago, with her husband and two kids --- to utter a desire out loud, even among friends, was terrifying: "It doesn't seem like much now, I know, to admit ambition to your closest friends. I guess you'll have to take my word for it: it was. It makes me a little sad when I look back on it, to think how very many women didn't have Wednesday Sisters, to wonder who they might have become if they had."

In admitting their passion for writing, the "Wednesday Sisters" begin to nourish lifelong bonds among themselves that transcend their literary goals. Linda, the frank, sometimes tactless one, lives with the fear that the disease that took her mother when she was young might do the same to her: "I grew up the child of a sick mother, and then the child of a dead mother. I couldn't imagine going back to that. I couldn't imagine putting my kids through that." Kath is a spitfire Southern belle dealing with issues in her complicated marriage. Brett is the ladylike brain, always attired in white gloves that conceal a hidden tragedy from her past. Ally is demure and soft-spoken, crumbling under the weight of fertility issues, who desperately wants to write a children's book to rival CHARLOTTE'S WEB.

When they first begin to meet on that playground, as their children play around them, each is taking a decisive step to move past her fears and express herself through writing. And in the words of Robin Morgan's seminal anthology from that time, they prove that "Sisterhood is Powerful." As they gain confidence in their writing and critiquing ability, they notice they are beginning to turn their keen eyes on the world that is changing all around them.

From the outset, they gather to watch the Miss America Pageant each year. At first, they enjoy it as frothy entertainment, but later they witness how the women's movement has affected this annual event, even their own opinions of femininity and what it means to be female. Through their weekly meetings and unwavering support, each faces moments when she flourishes and, yes, sometimes flounders. And each is buoyed by the others' strength and fortitude, through some of life's most difficult obstacles. Their little writing group has blossomed into something more --- it has become the foundation of lifelong friendships.

Meg Waite Clayton's stirring novel will appeal not just to those who secretly wish to be writers, but to anyone with a love of great books; anyone who has felt truly moved by a book or an author; and anyone who has had their dreams bolstered by good and faithful friends. It will speak volumes to fans of THE FRIDAY NIGHT KNITTING CLUB and THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB. You'll want to share THE WEDNESDAY SISTERS with anyone who believes in the power of a good book --- to inspire those close to us, and for those who inspire.

--- Reviewed by Bronwyn Miller