The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown

I don’t remember where I first heard of The Weird Sisters (Berkley Books, 2011) by Eleanor Brown, but it has been hanging out on my Amazon wish list for some time. This year for Christmas, my dad gave me this book, and I am glad he did. I fell completely into the story of these three sisters and didn’t want to come out.

The Andreas family is decidedly eccentric, but I think I would fit right in. Much of their childhood was shaped by their father, a brilliant professor obsessed by Shakespeare. He named each of his daughters after a character from the Bard’s plays. When words failed them, they followed their father’s lead in quoting Shakespeare lines to express their thoughts. No one in the family is ever without a book. The three Andreas sisters have now  returned home to Barnwell, Ohio, to help care for their mother, who is battling breast cancer. Each daughter also brings home a secret failure that is bound to be discovered now that they are all together under one roof again:

  • Rose (Rosalind) is a homebody who has finally found her true love. Her fiance, Jonathan, invites her to join him in England, but can she leave? Won’t her family fall apart without her there to pick up the pieces. If you haven’t guessed, Rose can be quite bossy, but she means well.
  • Bean (Bianca) fled small town Ohio for the glitz and glamour of New York City, but the city has sent her home with her tail between her legs. She is mortified at her choices that led to her ruin, but lashes out at anyone who suggests she should confront her demons.
  • Cordy (Cordelia) is the beloved baby, who never quite grew up. She’s spend the last years travelling the roads, following bands and crashing wherever she can find a spot to land. When she discovers that she is pregnant, she returns home but isn’t brave enough to share her news with her family.

Brown deftly weaves together the stories of the three sisters,both past and present, with an unusual choice of point of view–first person plural. It took me a while to get used to it, but in the end I loved how the collective consciousness of the narration tied together the lives of the three sisters. Even when they tried, they could not escape their shared past, and in the end, that shared history brought them together and freed them to choose their own futures.

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