Belated Birthday Socks and The 7 or 8 Deaths of Stella Fortuna

The knitting is a pair of bright pink socks and the novel is The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna by Juliet Grames.

My husband's birthday was 8 months ago, but I finally finished and gave him a pair of pink socks like I had planned.  I started to knit a pair back in March, but made them way too tight.  At least I got a pair of socks out of it that time.  

The socks I made last time.  This what the yarn looks like in real life.

I cast on 68 stitches on Size 0 needles with really light fingering weight yarn.  I'm happy that I've found a use for this yarn, and I'm really excited to have matching socks with my husband.  In the last few years, we've gotten a few matching shirts and enjoyed wearing them out and about.  Matching plaid shirts, matching masks, matching socks--I am really considering knitting myself a super bulky sweater to match the one I made for him a couple of years ago.  So fun!

This week's book was less fun.  

After skipping last month's book club pick because I thought it was scary, I was determined to make it through The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna by Juliet Grames.  It was sad, and if I think about it too long I get gripped by the existential terror that is being a woman because men are so awful and they made the whole world and women can get hit by men, die from having too many babies they don't want with men they don't love, and have all their money taken by men.  All of these things happen to Stella, over and over again.  And to most of the women she knows.  

The descriptions of the mountains in Italy were nice.  World War I was a far-off thing.  Immigrating to America is, of course, a thing that happens but only after some false starts and struggle and stress.  There are a few times when you almost believe--even with the narrator telling you how some of the future will be--that headstrong, creative, intelligent Stella will figure out a way to escape her situation.  But she doesn't.  Because men are terrible.  It's all so terrible.  There are bits of happiness.  But it's mostly terrible.

One of the greatest tragedies, though, is how she spends the last third of her life hating her sister.  Is this meant to be an allegory?  Or something?  I could probably do a couple of paragraphs about Stella's skill as a seamstress and crocheter throughout the years and how it was once highly prized, then more regarded as a given (but still appreciated), and finally she's just crocheting more blankets than anyone needs and when she's old and keeps starting new projects, her son unravels the projects she's forgotten about so she'll have 'new' yarn.  But I don't want to because that's almost as old of a theme as any other in this novel and it's depressing and hits too close to home.  

This was well-written, but I hated it.  I don't know what I expected, but there was a depth of sadness to this story that basically guarantees I wouldn't have picked this out for myself even back when I was in my early 20s and felt compelled to read books that were challenging or had good reviews or had been mentioned by websites like Salon or some other one that probably doesn't exist anymore.  I haven't started on next month's pick, yet.  I'm currently still working my way through books I'll enjoy.