Book Review: Round Robin by Jennifer Chiaverini

By Sandy Nachlinger

I’ve recently finished reading ROUND ROBIN, the second book in Jennifer Chiaverini’s Elm Creek Quilters Series, and once again I’ve learned more about quilting while enjoying a heart-warming story.

In this book, Chiaverini’s characters make a round robin quilt (also called a friendship quilt) as a surprise for the group’s leader and founder, Sylvia Compson. What’s a round robin quilt? I didn’t know either until I’d read this story. It works like this: One person makes a center square or medallion which she passes on to the next quilter. That person adds a border around the original square—anything that strikes her fancy—and then passes it on to the next person, who adds her border too. And so it goes until everyone has contributed to the quilt and the quilt has grown to the agreed upon size. It’s obvious where the names “friendship” and “round robin” come from, isn’t it?

Chiaverini’s book follows the lives of each of the quilters as they make their contributions to the finished design. The quilters’ efforts on the project loosely provide the story’s structure. With mothers estranged from daughters, troubled skateboarding teenagers, financial worries—the details of each quilter’s story are woven through the book’s plot as the quilt progresses. The design of each border chosen by the contributors also ties into the quilters’ life challenges. With friendship and support, the Elm Creek quilters deal with their issues and resolve them to the reader’s satisfaction.

Since there are about two dozen books in this series (with more on the way), I’m looking forward to learning lots more about what goes into a quilt while discovering what’s happening with the Elm Creek Quilters since I last left them. I highly recommend this book to readers of women’s fiction, especially those who enjoy quilting, whether as needlewomen or as admirers of this age old craft.

Photo source: http://elmcreek.net/gallery/quilts

The quilt pictured above is a representation of the round robin quilt featured in the book. The center medallion shows Elm Creek Manor, the book’s main setting.

Book Review: Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock

By Lynn Schneider

It wouldn’t have been a book I would have read, had I  not seen an article in the Columbus Dispatch about it and the author, Donald Ray Pollock. Mr. Pollock is an older first-time author (one of us boomers) and was born and grew up in a place called Knockemstiff, Ohio.

Knockemstiff the town has almost nothing going for it, nothing it’s famous for, except that it has a funny name and some author wrote a collection of short stories about people who live there. They say the name evolved because of a huge brawl in a tavern, but there are also other myths.

Being interested in older authors, and older first-time authors, and especially older first-time authors who live in somewhat the same vicinity as me, I decided it looked interesting enough to read.

The author dropped out of high school at age 17, worked in a meat packing plant and then spent thirty-two years working in a paper mill. He received an MFA from Ohio State in 2009. This is very impressive, that a person from such a background would do so much later in life. He obviously saw the humor, and the sadness, in his surroundings and probably wanted to write about it.

The stories take place from the sixties through the nineties. In the first story we see a character as a child, and in the end, he returns as an adult. He was a messed up kid, and he’s still messed up as an adult. All the people of Knockemstiff are messed up.

I thought a long time about reviewing this book, because these stories are very graphic, profane, and potentially upsetting. They are not for everyone. For the reader who has an aversion to the F word or senseless violence or drug use or not quite normal sexual behavior, you might want to pass on it.

But I read it, because I was curious, as one might watch a movie about gang violence or the mafia. And I found it to be one of those books that I didn’t forget. It stayed with me, partially due to the shock factor but mostly because the writing is superb.

When I went back and reread some of the stories, I remembered there was one that I found extremely unsettling. It’s the second one, Dynamite Hole. I couldn’t reread it. It was too much. It’s the part in the movie where I turn away, I can’t watch.

The stories are funny but pathetic. I sure hope they aren’t true, that there really are people like the characters in Knockemstiff. I’d sure hate to think that.

One is called Bactine. A couple of guys “huffing Bactine”, end up in an all night Crispie Creme hoping to meet up with a guy who was supposed to have “some Seconal suppositories left over from his dead dad’s unsuccessful bout with cancer”.  The story is about that visit to “The Creme” described thus:

The place was all windows and plastic woodwork and those buzzing fluorescent lights that always make me look like a corpse. A radio in the back was playing a fast Christmas song that only religious people could understand.

The waitress sleeps on her feet behind the case of “day olds”.

Another story, called “I Start Over”, is the one I remembered the most, about a desperate guy who knows his best years are way behind him, saddled with a son who is brain damaged because of a drug overdose. He eats junk food though he knows he shouldn’t. He thinks:

Besides, I’m beginning to believe that anything I do to extend my life is just going to be outweighed by the agony of living it.

While in the drive thru lane at the Dairy Queen, he becomes involved in an altercation and beats up a couple of kids in the car behind him who are making fun of his son drooling in the backseat. At least one of the kids is seriously hurt. He knows it’s over, he takes off but hears sirens after a while and knows they are for him. Hence the title “I Start Over”. He was really ending it, his unhappy existence.

The characters in the stories are a collection of addicts, rapists, molesters, runaways. Crippled, disfigured, damaged and demented characters. Sad, desperate people living lives we can’t even imagine. There’s sex without love, and good parents are nonexistent in this collection.

Yet, because the writing is so precise, the descriptions so good, and the underlying element of humor throughout, it is very enjoyable.

Beware of that second story though. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

Go ahead, ask me why I’m smiling

by Dee Ernst

It’s September, so let’s reflect for a moment on the greatest glory of the fall – no, not football. Or the World Series. I’m talking about Back-To-School.

When I was a kid, Back-To-School (going forward know as BTS) meant new shoes, new school clothes, a new winter coat and packet of notebook paper for my favorite three ring binder. That first day of class was all about discovery – who your teacher was, who was in your class, that fresh box of crayons, and a cabinet full of construction paper, pots of glue, and boxes of #2 pencils. Going BTS meant I could spend time with all the people I had been away from during the summer – the first few weeks were a flurry of catching up with old friends and assessing the worth of possible new friends.

There were also a few noticeable low points – that gym uniform, for example, a one-piece article of torture and humiliation designed to make any girl of any shape or size look hideous. Trying to memorize yet ANOTHER locker combination. Math class.

Remember having to listen to the radio to find out if school was closing for a snow day? Pencil sharpeners that worked only when you actually turned the handle? Library cards made of cardboard that came in a little paper sleeve? Remember covering your books with brown paper bags?

Well, for those of you that might be out of the loop, BTS is looking a bit different these days. Let’s talk school supplies. Last year, my daughter’s middle school posted their supply lists online. Her team ( Yes, the kids are divided into ‘teams’ now. To foster, I am told, a spirit of cooperation and friendship. I guess without teams, the kids would spit at each other all year) I digress. Sorry. Her team had sixteen different items listed, getting picky about what color highlighter and what size Post-its were required. It was over $100.00 at Staples. And on top of that, I still had to worry about new clothes, new shoes, and a new winter coat.

Thank God high school teachers don’t have supply lists. But they do have a universal impression that every parent has complete access to the Internet, because everything you need to know about how and what your kid is doing in school is available there, and only there. You can go online for assignments and worksheets. As a parent I can access her grades, and even follow the classwork on something called a Moodle page. I don’t know what that is, but, really? Moodle? What kind of word is that for a serious educational tool?

My daughter also found out her schedule online, and, through the magic of Facebook, knew the names and phone numbers of all her classmates. She has a password which will allow her to read her textbooks online. She can send homework to a mailbox, meaning students will never again be allowed the excuse ‘I forgot’. We’ve signed up for “District Alerts” which will immediately text delayed openings and school closings.

By the way, when I mentioned gym uniforms, hand-cranked pencil sharpeners and brown paper bags, I got The Look. You know, the one that goes with that famous question, ‘ And did you have to walk five miles? Each way?? Uphill??? In a blizzard????’

Technology is wonderful, even for those of us who have struggled with it in the past, and will continue to be flummoxed in the future. After all, it’s our kids we’re talking about, and my daughter can type like demon and puts together a power-point presentation that can bring tears to your eyes. Those are the real skills she’ll need going forward, so I’m trusting all those highly paid, well-educated professionals who set the curriculum and who don’t think she’ll need to spell or master cursive writing. Think of all the trees we’ll save by not having endless announcements and notices going home. Imagine all the white-out we won’t have to buy for research papers. No more sagging backpacks overloaded with heavy textbooks, no more protractors, no getting stabbed with a compass, no more over-sized projects put together with poster-board and glue. All our kids have to do is press a button.

And hope the computer doesn’t go on the fritz.