If you’ve ever seen a knitting or crochet group get together at your local library or community centre, you’ll know that craft groups are a hive of big personalities. The Copeton Crochet Circle, AKA the Copeton Craft Resistance, are no different.
These ladies (and gentleman) are the cast of Kate Solly‘s charming debut novel, Tuesday Evenings with the Copeton Craft Resistance, which was released at the very end of 2022. Inspired by the author’s own love of crochet, as well as a number of real movements such as ‘Welcome to Eltham’, the novel follows a local crochet club who decide to combat the rising unwelcome tide of Islamophobia in their town the best way they know how- through yarn-bombing.
For those who don’t know what yarn-bombing is, it is “the action… of covering objects or structures in public places with decorative or knitted material as a form of street art.” Or, in the case of the Copeton Crafters, it’s a form of resistance. After fringe groups begin protesting the building of a new mosque in their town and the housing of refugee families in a former retirement community by putting plastic spiders all over the place, Meredith, Edith, Claire, Yasmin, Lottie, Harper and Luke decide to fight back the best way they know how – with their crochet hooks.
Each of the members of the club has their own reasons for wanting to be there. For the most part, the narrative follows Claire (mother of five and seemingly unable to finish any of the crochet projects she starts), Yasmin (a local council worker who is also Muslim, and having a hard time in her first pregnancy), and Meredith (a marketing manager with some social issues to contend with). The structure of the novel hops between the heads of these three women, as well as those of the people around them to paint a full picture of the community as it grows throughout the events of the book.
If at times the book suffers from having a few too many voices in the mix (for example, some extraneous scenes from the points of view of co-workers we never hear from again), it makes up for lost time in the way it cleverly knits – or should I say crochets – the disparate plot-lines together in the third act. There is little trace of the deus ex machina here, just clever planning and a whole lot of heart.
Each of the three lead characters follows their own fully realised arc, although it is Claire who feels the most fleshed out (probably because her life shares some similarities with that of the author’s own.) I got the sense while reading the sections in Yasmin’s point of view that Solly has done extensive research into writing about a Muslim character, and I really appreciated the way that her relationship with Claire found ways to interrogate the idea that one person should be a monolith for their entire minority group.
Claire, hilariously, lives with her foot in her mouth constantly and lives in fear of saying the wrong thing. Through her friendship with Yasmin, we see her learning, and we learn alongside her. (N.B. I cannot claim to speak for any non-white readers of this book as to how they feel about the inclusion of a Muslim character’s point of view. But to have a book about a community standing up against Islamophobia where the only non-white characters did not get the same focus as everyone else would have felt off, and the author’s notes do indicate community consultation took place. Also, there is a scene in which Yasmin brutally takes down an A Current Affair style journalist who is trying to interview her as a stereotype, and it’s pure gold.)
Meredith’s arc is perhaps the most layered of the three, as we see her one way from the outside and another when she tells her own story. I would have liked to have seen this technique go a little further; but when you’re balancing an ensemble cast of characters, I can see how that might have been a rabbit hole best avoided.
If you like your beach reads with a side order of social justice, or you love a novel that considers the deeper issues without preachiness (think Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens), then look no further. Tuesday Evenings with the Copeton Craft Resistance is funny, charming and will keep you turning the pages. Heck, it might even have you reaching for your crochet hook.
FIVE STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
Kate Solly’s Tuesday Evenings with the Copeton Craft Resistance is out now through Affirm Press. Grab yourself a copy from Booktopia HERE.
