Portobello Book Blog

Tuesday Evenings with the Copeton Craft Resistance by Kate Solly is a little gem I came across while browsing the Libby App for my next audiobook. I really feel I should have put this review out yesterday with it being Tuesday but already had something planned for then! It only appears to be available for ebooks in the UK at the moment (published by Affirm Press) and in audiobook format (published by WF Howes).

About the Book

Meredith established the Copeton Crochet Collective (no knitters please) because it would be like having friends, only with her in charge, and because there would be no men. It comes as a nasty shock then when Luke, the handsome grandson of no-nonsense Edith, decides to stay and learn to crochet. Claire joins to escape her relentless children and Yasmin so that someone might ask her who she likes on Masterchef instead of asking the same five questions about her hijab.

When plans for a new mosque wake the sleepy town, Copeton is stirred and Islamophobia bubbles to the surface. The Crochet Collective becomes the Craft Resistance, and this motley crew of fibre-arts enthusiasts begins to battle racism and bigotry with colour and creativity. But will the fragile threads of community be enough to bind them when more than one member has something to hide?

My Thoughts

Well, I just loved this book! Set in a small town in Australia, it was lovely to hear the narrator Rebecca Macauley’s Australian accent. She was brilliant at bringing all the different characters to life and making them quite distinct.

The characters who go to the Copeton Crochet Collective are a really diverse group. They all have very different reason for being there, all have something they are hoping to get out of the group. What they get is so much more than they expected and most cases something they didn’t realise they needed. Kate Solly has created some wonderful characters and I adored them all, even spiky set-in-her ways Meredith who I really didn’t expect to come to like at all. The friendship between Claire and Yasmin was wonderful to read about, as was watching Meredith finally relax. Young Harper is a standout character: feisty, determined and sharply intelligent she just needed an opportunity to shine and she certainly got that.

As often happens in groups where different people come together over a common interest, the group grows into a real community. It takes some time for sure and there are of course tensions within the group which Kate Solly wrote about in a really believable way. Various themes are explored through the characters such as loneliness, second chances, xenophobia and believing in yourself.

Having listened to this story, I really want to learn how to crochet now! Tuesdays Evenings with the Copeton Craft Resistance was one of these chance discoveries which turn out to be an unexpected delight. Kate Solly has stitched together (pun fully intended!) a terrific cast of characters in this heart-warming and uplifting story of community, connections, friendship and crochet. This is Kate Solly’s debut novel and I would be eager to read more from her.

About the Author

Kate Solly writes funny, feel-good fiction with an eye for the profound within the domestic. Her first novel, Tuesday Evenings with the Copeton Craft Resistance, is a hilarious and heartwarming read about community, bigotry and the power of grassroots craftivism. Kate is married and has six children. When she’s not writing, she spends her days saying ‘put that stick down’ in a firm voice and divesting her kitchen table of its cemented weetbix glaze.

F: @katesollywrites
I: @katesollywriter
W:katesolly.com
B: laptopontheironingboard.wordpress.com