Casting on … It starts almost by accident: the women who buy their knitting needles and wool from Georgia’s store linger for advice, for a coffee, for a chat and before they know it, every Friday night is knitting night. Finding a pattern … And as the needles clack, and the garments grow, the conversation moves on from patterns and yarn to life, love and everything. These women are of different ages, from different backgrounds and facing different problems, but they are drawn together by threads of affection that prove as durable as the sweaters they knit. The Friday Night Knitting Club – don’t you want to join?

A QUICK READ – part of the WORLD BOOK DAY 2009 literacy initiative for emergent readers. March 1928. Freddie Smith is on a motoring holiday in the mountains of south west France.

He is caught in a violent storm and his car crashes. He is forced to seek shelter in a boarding house in the nearby village of Axat. There he meets another guest in the tiny hotel, a pale and beautiful young woman called Marie.

As the storm rages outside, she explains how the region was ripped apart by wars of religion in the 14th century. She tells how, one terrible night in March 1328, all the inhabitants of Axat were forced to flee from the soldiers into the mountains. The villagers took refuge in a cave, but when the fighting was over, no one came back.

Their bodies were never found. Axat itself became a ghost town. When Freddie wakes the following morning, Marie has gone.

Worse still, his car will take several days to repair and he has to stay at the boarding house for a few days more. To pass the time, he explores the mountains. Then he realises it is almost 600 years to the day since the villagers disappeared.

He decides to go and look for the cave himself. Perhaps, he thinks, he might even find Marie? It is a decision he will live to regret..

At least it wasn’t like many non-fiction books that have a very thin basic premise, which could be introduced, explained, and summarised in 10 pages, but which then go and fill 300 pages with padding. Been there too many times to count.

Part one of a trilogy…

If you can’t get the answer within a few seconds, you had better read the book and learn about the implications of thinking at the speed of a blink – where first impressions can either aid us or fail us.

Thrilled to find out that Gladwell has a new book coming out in October entitled “What the Dog Saw: And other Adventures” where he brings together, for the first time, the best of his writing from The New Yorker over the same period.

PS – A clue to the answer to the question above – Who says doctors are always male?

Looking forward to my next one : Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.