The Wednesday Sisters are a group of friends in Palo Alto, CA in the '60s. There's Frankie, who has always nursed dreams of being a writer, Kath, who's struggling with a falling-apart marriage, Ally, who can't conceive with her Indian husband (which in itself was shocking at the time), Brett, who inexplicably always covers her hands in gloves, and Linda, a tough-talking feminist.
The five women, all in their 20s when the novel starts, discover they all have a passion for writing and decide to form a writing group. They meet Wednesday mornings and critique each others stories. Through their writing, they discover more about themselves - what it means to be a woman in the '60s, the dreams they abandoned when getting married that they can possibly recapture - and in the process find the best friends they can imagine.
There's a lot to like about this book - the characters are varied and sympathetic, the sprinkling of '60s history is entertaining, the feminist plot lines are fascinating, and it's a great testament to friendship. But I just couldn't breeze through it the way I felt I should. Sometimes I felt things were very obvious, but the characters didn't pick up on them until many chapters later. The ending was a little unrealistic, though cute. Though I wouldn't rule out reading something else by Clayton, it probably won't be first on my list.
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