Review of Knitting...

Mark Worthing
Dean of Theology, Tabor College, Adelaide, South Australia

Anne Bartlett’s book Knitting (Penguin 2005) is full of surprises. The local South Australian literary community was surprised (and relieved!) to see it knock Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code off the top of the bestseller list for two weeks running. I was surprised that a book titled Knitting with a photo of a ball of knitting yarn and a cup of coffee set against a pastel pink cover would appeal to blokes, too. In fact, I found myself so engaged with the story that I couldn’t put it down on the bus ride into work. A few odd looks from other passengers couldn’t dissuade me. The other surprise was that the author, an active Christian, had chosen to write a mainstream book, published by a very mainstream publisher. I was expecting a story about women and knitting that had little connection to Christian themes. I was wrong on all counts.

Knitting is not really about knitting at all – though for those familiar with the craft and its terminology they will notice that the author has done her homework. More than anything, Knitting is a book about relationships, about loss, and about healing.

The main characters in the novel constitute an unlikely trio. Martha, the expert and even compulsive knitter, is a homey woman. She is a battler with simple needs and concerns. She is kind-hearted and bright but not highly educated and certainly not well off. Sandra, by contrast, appears to be everything Martha is not. A university lecturer in the history of textiles, Sandra is not lacking in resources and is self-confident to a fault, but struggling with the recent death of her husband. In just about every conceivable real-life scenario Sandra and Martha would never cross paths – and if they did each would likely take little notice of the other. Anne Bartlett brings these two very different characters convincingly together through a third main character – even more unlikely and broken than Martha and Sandra: a homeless man named Cliff.

These three characters from three different strata of society come together when Cliff suffers a seizure in Rundle Mall (the entire story is set in Adelaide). Martha alone stops to help, and eventually Sandra comes to their aid and uses her mobile to call an ambulance. From there the intertwining of these three lives becomes the central story.

Anne Bartlett’s book is not full of sudden and unexpected twists. But at the same time not everything is as it first appears. Cliff, who enters the story as the most needy of the three, is shown to be stronger and better adjusted than one might expect. Sandra and Martha, the in-control good Samaritans at the beginning of the novel, are increasingly forced to confront their own deep wounds and need for healing.

The characters are compelling and complex. Each chapter strips away another layer of protective veneer as we begin to discover who these people really are. The superb characterisation alone, for me, was worth the price of the book. The big unexpected bonus are the spiritual themes and imagery that pervade the novel so thoroughly as to be unobtrusive, simply because they are always present – at least in the background.

While none of the characters (at least at the beginning of the narrative) could be considered overtly religious, several scenes actually take place in a church where Martha finds work as a cleaner and Sandra’s friend Kate is an active member. The church also becomes the site chosen by Sandra for an exhibition of the recent history of knitting, featuring the work of Martha. It is in this same church that Sandra, visiting for the first time at the invitation of Kate, muses about the nature of prayer after noticing the prayer list in the bulletin. She realises that when her husband died she had probably also been among those ‘wrapped in someone’s prayer . . . in absentia.’ And later in the book one of the key extended scenes takes place during a Good Friday communion service!

It’s refreshing to find an author not afraid to portray religious convictions, themes and worship settings as part of the ordinary stuff of life when these things are either excised from most recent novels completely, or are or brought into view in a negative manner only. I found the positive religious background settings sprinkled generously through the novel both bold and effective. But the religious imagery does not stop there. Later in the narrative, at a time when physical, emotional and spiritual healing are needed, a warm and compassionate character (the hospital cleaner) enters the lives of the main characters briefly, tenderly and anonymously. If he weren’t so familiar to me I may also have paid him little notice. The real turning point in the story, which is also the breakthrough that all the characters need to get past the various impasses of their lives, comes through their encounters (especially Martha’s) with the cleaner – an unmistakable Christ figure.

For those in the Christian community who bemoan the absence of Christian imagery and themes in good mainstream writing, while cringing at the same time at the quality and content of some of what is being promoted as ‘Christian fiction’ I would strongly recommend a read of Anne Bartlett’s Knitting – even if you happen to be a bloke!