Yes, and at the PTA, nursery school dropoff, and other child-centered places. Of course, now that we’re all grown up – rather, our kids are – it’s more difficult to find those places.
My husband has his community at the gym - though he’d fit in better if he watched sports. PTA was a great community and I miss it. I still have a small group of PTA friends, but many have moved away or we just lost touch. My main community now is our neighborhood association. We have a small pond and park in our neighborhood which always seems to need nurturing. There’s also a native plant garden that is run by volunteers. In the 19th century in the US I think quilting bees and the like helped. My SIL used to have a “salon” once a week that ran during nursery school hours. Women would bring their knitting and chat.
^ Also, religious communities can be a great source of friendship and support, if one leans in that direction. I work for a Catholic parish and both the social service and the social life are made up primarily of women. (In fact, @SouthJerseyChessMom, I was working late at a parish event last night, hence the timing of my post!).
Also, I could be wrong, but I think more women than men turn to online communities for camaraderie. That seems to be the case at CC and I’ve benefitted from the back-and-forth with this group for years. I know it’s not the same as “real life,” but it’s an enjoyable connection with other people.
Thanks, @Mary13, for the mythological connections.
And to @SouthJerseyChessMom for the quote from Setterfield about portraits of 19th century women. I was interested in how Rita was basically invisible to all the other men romantically:
yet photographer Daunt was attracted to her when his eyes were swollen shut and he couldn’t see her.
When he first encounters Rita as he cares for her at the inn, he conjures up an ordinary middle-aged plain woman. But after they talk at length, and she tells a story (about Quietly), and he tries to imagine her thoughts, “his vision of Rita Sunday had altered in the course of their conversation. She now looked not altogether unlike the Maidens of Destiny”–the underground mermaids he imagined for his teenage nighttime fantasies!
So first he “sees” her through her words and thoughts, and then through his camera.
Later Rita describes for him the man who attacked her (Victor), despite not being able to see him in the dark. There’s so much in the book about what we see, and don’t see, and how that influences how the characters construct their stories.
Yeah, I’ve never clicked with most of the regulars at our religious community. They are all way too earnest!
Storytelling, plain and simple (Think Joe and patrons gathered at The Swan.)
Facts and nothing but the facts - a police report; a letter
Facts embellished/omitted
Stories told as therapy
Gossip
News
Stories withheld (Lily and Vaughn)
Lies
Myths (Quietly)
(I can’t think of any more.)
Oh, I really like this possibility. Daunt wasn’t ready to go to the other side of the river. It wasn’t his time to die, so they brought him back. For some reason she didn’t make it back to Quietly. That is who she was always looking for up and down the river.
Stories shredded to bits and stuffed in pockets! (the letter from Alice’s mother to Robin)
Photographs. A picture is worth a thousand words, after all. This would include both Daunt’s portraits and the photos in the Magic Lantern show.
Advertisements, specifically for Stella the Sapient pig (aka Maud), as seen on p. 383. She can spell and read, cast accounts, play at cards, tell any person what o’clock it is to a minute, discover a person’s thoughts and reveal the future! (I suppose that would fall into the “Lies” category, unless you’re a believer in magical pigs.) 
Don’t forget the whole magic lantern fake ghost story at the end!
Admissions of guilt - Victor and Robin Fortune telling. Ben’s tale to enter the orphanage - a lie but one told selflessly and for good reason
Explanations of a scientific nature - Daunt and Rita; Dreams
Re: Where do women find community? I would add Book Club(s)! Our most recent move, to an urban location, was after our children had graduated from HS – meaning I wasn’t part of any school parent associations. Being invited to join a Book Club by one of a handful of people I knew in that city was a life saver for me.
I’ll add being a member of our local chapter of the NJ Womans Club Association for almost 20 years was wonderful experience.
Everyone in the novel possesses a little bit (or a lot) of belief in folk tales or the supernatural. One example of a concrete, real-life consequence of this is that the Armstrongs immediately give up the little girl when Bess’s Seeing eye tells her that she doesn’t belong with them. Even the scientifically-minded Rita, with her “exacting standards” (as Daunt says) is affected by this:
She goes on to explain that she believes in intuition, that it’s a gift. She is open to accepting what can’t be explained scientifically.
So, that brings up a question for all of us: What do you believe that can’t be explained by science? Are there any vestiges of folklore in your day-to-day practices, despite living in the modern era?
For my part, I still knock on wood, even though I’m aware it’s just a silly habit. You know…”I haven’t had a cold all year! Knock on wood" (reaches over and raps on the table). When I was little, I was afraid to walk under a ladder…and it still seems like I’m pushing my luck if I do, even though I know that’s ridiculous.
And religion, of course, is a whole other story. I’ll tread carefully here—dangerous subject—but use my own experience. In my daily, secular life, I have “exacting standards”: I do not believe that it’s possible to be raised from the dead; I am confident that everyone around me is 100% human, and if a friend told me he had just turned water into wine, walked on water, or healed a blind man with spit and mud, I would consider him nuts. But as a Catholic, I go to mass on Sunday to follow the teachings of a being who is both fully human and fully divine, who performed multiple miracles, and who rose from the dead. So who am I to question changelings, witches and dragons? I guess faith and folklore are intertwined. We believe some things that sound crazy, while scoffing at other things that are no less crazy.
This passage is from a 2008 artlcle, but still applicable:
Like my husband my religion is evolution. Well it’s a bit more complicated than that, but I do believe that religion evolved because it made societies stronger. I also think we have a strong urge to explain stuff we don’t understand. There’s a lot that science can explain, but not everything. I’ve read enough Oliver Sacks to know that the mind can lead to some pretty weird stuff. I really liked Rita’s explanation for Bess’s seeing eye.
@Mary13 kudos to you for bringing up the “elephant in the room” - and, addressing religious beliefs/ folklore in such a sensitive, honest, and personal way.
I just want to say how wonderful for you to have a job, in the Parrish office, which must be most rewarding. We know you work some long hours, based on the times of some of these posts, and I just want to thank you for being such a dedicated facilator to these book discussions, at the expense of extra time sleeping. You rock.
I am going to skirt around the “elephant” (taking the safe way )
and comment on how well Diane Setterfield navigated this mine field.
The two characters I remembered as “religious” were The Parson, and formerly religious Rita.
Two memories of their depiction from the book-
The Parson, was a very good man, who helped Lily White, in her time of need, and was portrayed as “man of good faith”.
Rita, our heroine, was a kind, good, caring woman, who prayed with Margot, as Joe slowly slipped away. It was an intimate moment.
@Mary13 you selected the perfect scene with Rita returning the child to the Vaughan’s Based on Bessie’s “seeing eye”. Rita’s apparent contradiction of her beliefs “science and faith”, just made her more human to me.
For what is faith, if there is no doubt ? Kudos to Setterfield for dealing with that so well.
Thanks for those kind words, @SouthJerseyChessMom. I started working full-time about a year ago, and the days are long and hectic, but I enjoy the work – and I love unwinding at the end of the day (or gearing up at the start of the day!) with our book club.
I agree. Another thing that made her very human to me is that she can’t quite separate herself from the faith she’s rejected. I liked how she would occasionally talk to the God who no longer existed for her:
I’ve definitely had days like that. Lots of them!
It’s already June 11th, so we can begin to think about our August selection – but of course, we’re still here for those who got Once Upon a River late from the library and might still be reading.
I was raised very religious, but have never been religious as an adult. I am not anti-religious and there are still remnants of my religious uprbringing that are difficult to leave behind. I guess I am similar to Rita.
I seem to hold on to the possibility that there is something beyond our human comprehension. I have one dream that has stuck with me whenever I try to understand the hard to understand. I only had this dream once when I was 20. My father had recently passed away and my older brother and his wife became pregnant around the same time. This was before ultrasound told us the baby’s sex ahead of time, at least at our hospital. I had a very vivid dream of my father handing an infant boy to my brother. It felt like he was in the room with me. A few months later my nephew was born. I know the dream can be explained by the fact I missed my father and the fifty-fifty chance of the baby being a boy. Still, the dream felt so real that I still have a hard time shaking the possibility that it wasn’t more.
I looked at April’s discussion to see what books we considered for this go-round. I’m still interested in many of them. So here goes:
The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne
The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea
Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish
Educated by Tara Westover and Cheaper by the Dozen by Frank and Ernestine Gilbreth
Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann (non-fiction)
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson (non-fiction)
Bad Blood by John Carreyrou (non-fiction)
I’ll add
The 7 1/2 deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle - Author:Turton, Stuart
All still sound good to me. One concern: The Warmth of Other Suns is 720 pages (nonfiction). We usually read a longer book in the summer but … 720 pages nonfiction.
Gosh I had not realized that The Warmth of Other Suns is so long. I’m going to preemptively veto it. I want to read it, but on my own schedule. It generally takes me forever to read non-fiction.