Exclusive interview with author Meg Waite Clayton about her new book, dealing with mothers, daughters, and revealing the hidden
Rating: Three stars
By Gabrielle Pantera
“I sent Ally, who in The Wednesday Sisters wrote a children’s book, on a mission to write a Beatrix Potter biography,” says Wednesday Daughters author Meg Waite Clayton. “And, I thought that was going to be it…her doing research on Potter in the English Lake District. But the more I learned about Potter… After Peter Rabbit was rejected by every major British publisher, she decided to self-publish it. And despite her independence, she didn’t think women ought to vote. She is such a contradiction. And her relationship with her difficult mother paralleled the relationship of my character Ally, allowing me to explore Ally’s struggle through Beatrix Potter’s life.”
Wednesday Daughters follows Claytons book Wednesday Sisters. The two books can be read separately, but if you read Wednesday Sisters first you will have a better understanding of the mothers in the daughters book. The story of the daughters and how they come to grips with facts they learn about their mothers may be cathartic for women who have mother-daughter issues. However, the passages of Ally’s journal might throw the reader out of the book at times. Using it at the top of each chapter might have been an interesting way to use her journal to get a better understanding of all the characters in the book.
Hope Tantry has gone to her Ally’s cottage in the Lake District to clean out the last place her mother lived while writing about Beatrix Potter and getting together with her girlfriends. Her mothers’ friends daughters, Julie and Ann Page become Hope’s best friends. The trio don’t realize how difficult it will be to sort through Hope’s mother’s personal effects. They find facts about the family that don’t make sense. As they untangle the facts they find that Hope was connected to the Lake District in ways they didn’t know.
Hope’s mother’s notebooks, tucked away in a hidden drawer, are written in a mysterious code. As Hope and her friends try to decipher the code, they find clues connected to Ally’s unfinished Potter manuscript. They’re distracted by their own struggles. Hope has doubts about her marriage. Anna Page fears commitment in relationships. Julie’s feelings are still raw over the death of her twin sister.
“I wrapped up The Wednesday Sisters with an epilogue, and thought I was done with their stories,” says Clayton. “But I was talking with someone about his children, who are biracial, and it dawned on me that Ally’s daughter Hope would likely have faced the kinds of identity issues many children of mixed race do. So many readers had asked if I would do a sequel that a sequel that involved the daughters of the original five friends seemed somehow meant to be.”
“Because there is a running angle in The Wednesday Sisters, I got to meet my running hero, Joan Benoit Samuelson,” says Clayton. “A group of women asked if they could enter the Avon 3-Day Breast Cancer Walk as the Wednesday Sisters. I said yes, of course, and did a fundraiser for them.”
Clayton has written three prior novels: the New York Times bestseller The Wednesday Sisters, The Four Ms. Bradwells, and The Language of Light, the last of which was a finalist for the Bellwether Prize. She’s had essays published in The Los Angeles Times, The San Jose Mercury News, The Miami Herald, Writer’s Digest, Runner’s World, and The Literary Review, and read on public radio.
Clayton lives California, splitting her time between Palo Alto and Santa Barbara. She was born in Washington D.C.
The Wednesday Daughters by Meg Waite Clayton Hardcover: 304 pages, Publisher: Ballantine Books (July 16, 2013), Language: English, ISBN-13: 978-0345530288 $26.00 also available on Kindle.
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