A Farewell to Yarns (Jane Jeffry Mysteries, No. 2)
by Jill Churchill
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jill ChurchillEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1991-12-01
ISBN: 0380763990
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: Avon
Book Reviews of A Farewell to Yarns (Jane Jeffry Mysteries, No. 2)
Book Review: Afghan Anomaly; Angels & Angst; Tis the Season
Summary: 5 Stars
What a way to pull a reader into a story, by using morning home sounds of an abandoned Today Show on a TV in the kitchen, an upstairs bedroom stereo blaring a Queens album, a burbling coffee maker, furnace blowing full blast ... As Churchill writes:
"... and from the basement there was the sound of some lonely item of clothing with a metal button thrashing around in the dryer."
The kitchen phone's ringing and ringing to the backdrop of Max the cat twitching deaf ears to his world, as he fishes for tidbits in the garbage disposal.
As the prose continues, perfectly posed details continue to surface like gifts unwrapped and abandoned under a holiday tree, in this Normal Rockwell presentation of a suburban sanctuary, a lifestyle nearly abandoned to extinction, a lifestyle which Jill Chruchill has deftly preserved in her Jane Jeffry cozy mysteries. The suburban housewife may have been stigmatized by a culture gone manic, marveling only at the more macho role-playing-pursuits for the female side of society's equation.
But, thanks to Jane Jeffry, the suburban housewife has regained her status, she's been regenerated with a smirk of satisfaction, at least for this reader.
And what is the time of the year for the metropolis rejected homemaker to be in full regalia with an ungodly number of holiday balls juggling in the air? You got it. Christmas is fast approaching. The season's just-like-clockwork overwhelm for those heroic Moms harrying homemaking routines carried on beyond the boundaries of skyscraper heaven has just surged to the hosannas for Jane, as an old school chum sets up housekeeping in Jane's home, tagging along a new found son who's packing into a chip on his shoulder more hostility than Goldy's Arch (from Diane Mott Davidson's series) could ever dream to drudge out of his derriere.
The plot weaves through Jane's ongoing projects, the main one setting up a charity bazzar for her church, her teenagers' ongoing noises of various symbolic and real expressions trailing behind their paths through hormonal oblivion, and the interjection of this old friend she hardly knows, her son from Hell, and I can't recall what all else.
With each Jane Jeffry novel I read, from the early offerings to the latest, I'm amazed at how easily her plots spread along under fingertips turning pages, how simply and lightly entertaining they seem to be, while subtle symbolism and thematic machinations seethe under the fast rhythmic flow of the surface. It's so EASY to miss the depth. But, make no mistake; it's there. You may want to look for it. Finding it might be more rewarding than the entertainment buzzing through the pages as they flip themselves so you can read with less effort.
These JJ novels seem to parallel the constant and pervasive underestimation of the suburban housewife, that role which can be played successfully only by the most complex personalities among us.
This book is ripe with the ambiance of holiday cheer mixed inexorably into the deepest wells of human angst and anomaly. Please forgive my repetition, but I'm still in conundrum about how this series can be called light, while I add my conclusion that it is. What a magician of a flickering glow and contrasting darkness Jill Churchill weaves into A FAREWELL TO YARNS, as she contemplates fame Vs abandonment and anonymity, as she pulls an amateur afghan into a last minute, real and symbolic success.
Cheers to you, Jill; my hat's off to your subtle skill,
Linda G. Shelnutt
Summary of A Farewell to Yarns (Jane Jeffry Mysteries, No. 2)
Life is hectic enough for suburban single mom Jane Jeffrey this Christmas season--what with her having to survive cutthroat church bazaar politics and finish knitting the afghan from Hell at the same time. The last thing the harried homemaker needs is an unwelcome visit from old acquaintance Phyllis Wagner and her ill-mannered brat of a teenage son. And the Wagner picture becomes even more complicated when a dead body is woven into the design.Solving a murder, however, is a lot more interesting than knitting, so Jane's determined to sew the whole thing up. But with a plethora of suspects and the appearance of a second corpse, this deadly tapestry is getting quite complex indeed. And Jane has to be very careful not to get strangled herself by the twisted threads shes attempting to unravel.
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