( 8 reviews )
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Posted: Aug 8 2008
The book, like a beautiful quilt, was a wonderful way to stitch together the lives of these amazing women. How wonderful would it be to talk to the women in your life (i.e., Grandmothers, Aunts, Great Aunts, Cousins) and find the quilt pattern of their lives. This book was well worth reading. Would make a good book club discussion.
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( 2 of 2 found this review helpful ) Posted: Nov 19 2007
Every individual remains entitled to their own taste, but as Roger Ebert once observed in regard to movies, there are some that if a person didn't like they "just didn't get." Whitney Otto's highly original, engaging, and meticulously fashioned "How to Make an American Quilt" falls firmly in that category. Weaving together her subject as device, metaphor, and over-arching theme, Otto introduces us to her cast of characters all women whose lives are knitted together by their participation in a quilting circle. Some are close, others have no other thread connecting them, but each have a story. Yet Otto uses the quilt metaphor to its full effect, not only through the narrative, but interspersing between these women's stories short sections on the subject of that craft, each of which elucidate some emotional point which she explores in the next woman's story. Each story stands as distinct, yet serves as an integral part of the greater whole; like patches in a quilt, together their assembled scraps simply took my breath away.
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( 2 of 2 found this review helpful ) Posted: Jul 21 2007
If you like those kinds of books that start at point A, proceed through B, C, and D, before ending at E, well, think again. Whitney Otto has designed a story as complex, as colorful, as historical as any quilt imaginable. I'm not a quilter; I'm a mystery writer and editor. I'd like to think, though, that I do with words what my sister, a quilter, does with fabric, blending the silks and satins and flour sacks of nouns with the velvets and corduroys and cotton of verbs. HOW TO MAKE AN AMERICAN QUILT does just that. This is the deeply moving story of a group of quilters, women of varied ages and backgrounds. Watching their lives unfold like the joining of fabric squares is a joy from start to finish. HOW TO MAKE AN AMERICAN QUILT? How to make an American life.
