Friday, July 1, 2011

The Weird Sisters

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown

The first odd thing I noticed about this novel is that it's told in the first person plural. It's a clever and engaging device for sisters talking about themselves and each other, and kept me attentive to whose point of view I was reading as it shifted from the inside of a character's head to one, two or three characters collectively observing another. The voice is opinionated, familiar, loyal, funny, and often jealous or spiteful as siblings are about each other. Not much happens (three adult sisters move home as their mother struggles with cancer; they find themselves to be more than they thought) but plot doesn't much matter as the book is about personalities, family relationships, and how we evolve through involvement with others. A rich vein of Shakespeare runs through Weird Sisters in the naming of characters, the professor father's constant quoting, and the cast of literary archetypes that inhabit these contemporary, believable women.

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