REVIEW: Stitched: A Novel by Eli McCann
Betty Lou Dearden has been a member of the Ogden Quilters Association for more than twenty years when it is announced that the biggest quilting competition in the country is coming to Utah. With the clock ticking and a chance to finally beat their long-time rival quilting circle, the women welcome two young gay men to their group as they bicker their way to an award-worthy entry. With disarming humor and extraordinary heart, Eli McCann takes readers deep into the cozy but cutthroat world of competitive quilting and the sometimes-messy friendships that shape our lives.
Dear Mr. McCann,
I was looking forward to a book with older female characters and, honestly, some cutthroat quilting. The older female characters are definitely there in their full crotchety glory (and there are days now when I’m starting to feel my crotchetiness beginning to bloom) but honestly the quilting stuff is a bit of a let down.
Many of the characters are cliches: the grumpy cat lady, the deaf lady to whom everyone has to scream to be heard, the “take on everything until she’s overwhelmed” lady, the over-the-top gay guy. I had thought that the action would focus on how the two new additions to the quilting group – the younger gay men – would shake things up and help the quilt contest given the gay reference part of the announced “theme.” I had images of them helping come up with a quilt idea to focus on that but no. Rob is lovely but why is he there? Byron is an exuberant tea-spiller but mainly he’s just comic relief.
The promise of the “cutthroat world of competitive quilting” is, honestly, what got me interested in the book but it takes way past the halfway point to see much and even then I was still disappointed. What is there mainly consists of complaining about another regional group and their bitchy leader. There is a lot of long term seething and passive aggressiveness among the OGA quilters that is almost but not quite buried under a layer of “be nice” which has apparently been going on for years. Okay, yes I can understand this in women who are mainly 60-70+ years of age but … not what I was hoping for.
I have done some cross stitch and sewing over the years but no quilting. I didn’t expect to understand all the finer details about this craft but there’s a lot of so-so descriptions that tell me little and confuse me a lot. The OGA quilters are initially fired with enthusiasm but based on one past competition quilt description, they couldn’t be bothered to double check to depict the correct national flag, something which was incredulously noted by the judges. So when I read about their disparate ideas for individual quilt squares, it didn’t fill me with confidence about their final product. Then comes the scenes of their lackluster individual results and blasé efforts to finish the hand quilting. It all gave the impression – do they really care? and again – this is not cutthroat competition.
Dough-eyed. Yes, this description is in the book. Doe-eyed? Dewy-eyed maybe but an editor needed another pass through the book. There are lots of things like one character always carrying a large bracelet with 40some keys on it that jangles a lot. At one point she drops it but doesn’t notice this. Why is this even mentioned? There were definitely some funny moments that made me smile but overall the pacing was too slow.
There are plenty of older female characters which I like. But I feel there are too many characters and had to remind myself who was who. When they came back into the story I had trouble remembering who they were as they were just too similar to each other. We see more of Byron but Rob mainly fades into the background and as I asked earlier, why was he even there?
Now all this being said, I think the actual point of the book is friendship – both old and new, lost and regained, and contentious at times and this done well. Yet, cutthroat quilting is what I was promised and I don’t think this is really there enough. C-
~Jayne
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