Review: Finding what 'Matters' through books
Ava Tucker is reeling. A late-night ping on her husband’s cellphone reveals that nice-guy Jim — the kind of man who is there for just about everybody except his own family — has been having an affair with a yarn bomber.
Let’s start out by saying that it’s a relief to read anything in which the villain’s weapon of choice is a knitting needle. In The Book That Matters Most (Norton, 358 pp, *** stars out of four) author Ann Hood (The Knitting Circle) cleverly stitches Ava’s story with that of her troubled daughter, Maggie, weaving in a childhood mystery for a novel that deserves a spot on your summer reading list.
Ava nurses her heartbreak among the warm-hearted members of a quirky book club whose theme for the year is the books that had the most impact on their lives. Book club slackers will recognize Ava’s tricks to get through books she can’t quite face: Rent the movie if no CliffsNotes version exists. Ava’s wine-emboldened commentaries at book club and May-December dalliance with a hipster club member add just-right notes of awkward hilarity to the saga of a middle-age woman who finds herself reluctantly separated.
Books have always played an important role in Ava’s life. Her beautiful, passionate mother owned a bookstore, and one book in particular helped Ava through the loss of her sister and mother one horrible year. Desperate to impress her book club pals, Ava chooses that book as her book club selection, and promises that the author will come to their meeting. But her book is out of print and the search for its author leads her on an unexpected journey to the past.
Hood creates a sympathetically flawed character in Ava, and a harrowing portrayal of her wayward daughter, Maggie. Off for a year in Paris to be a writer, recklessly impulsive Maggie succumbs to an older man who plies her with the drugs she craves. This storyline wraps up too neatly and quickly for any reader who has experienced substance abuse in a loved one. Still, Hood’s novel is rich with pleasures, and will no doubt launch a thousand book club discussions about the transformative power of reading.