I See You Everywhere by Julia Glass
Release date: 2008 / 287 pages
Synopsis (from back cover): …a tale of two sisters, together and apart, told in their alternating voices over twenty-five years. Louise Jardine is the older one, the conscientious student, precise and careful: the one who yearns for a good marriage, an artistic career, a family. Clem, the archetypal youngest, is the rebel: uncontainable, iconoclastic, committed to her work but not to the men who fall for daring nature… In this vivid, heartrending story of what we can and cannot do for those we love, the sisters grow closer as they move farther apart.
First line: “I avoid reunions.”
Review:
Since I loved Glass’s last novel, The Whole World Over, I had such high hopes for this novel – and I did mostly like it. But the way the narration was set up just didn’t work for me. And I realized at the end that if someone asked me what the novel was about, my answer would be: “Two sisters… and their relationship… over time.”
Now, since I love character development, this premise should be a winner! But the narration jumps forward – sometimes only 1 or 2 years, sometimes 7 years – so we are left with a focused, intense foray into one sister’s life and then a significant gap before we are thrown into the other sister’s life (again, focused, intense).
I actually think the first chapter was the most effective when the author alternated between the two perspectives every few paragraphs or pages. Plus, in the first chapter the sisters were together, so we were able to see both perspectives of the same situation. This worked very well and is probably the reason why I didn’t realize I wasn’t really enjoying the novel until about 3/4ths of the way through (I read the novel in two sittings, by the way, on vacation in my in-laws’ gorgeous backyard). Since subsequent chapters only focused on one sister, we would therefore leave the other sister for 5 or more years at a time.
Also, the sisters didn’t really get along or spend much time together – although they did think about each other quite a bit – so my previous answer should really be: “Two sisters who didn’t really get along or spend much time together, neither of whom were very sympathetic or interesting.”
Sigh… Anyone else read this yet? I actually thought this novel would be good for a book club discussion, so I wrote up questions in case any one is interested.
(By the way — sorry about the font… I wrote this review — and a few others — in Florida and didn’t have time to change it back due to the wonderfully quick turn-around before Ethiopia. I promise to revert back once I’m home again for good!)
Hmm…I still want to read this one, but I’m a little more ambivalent than I was before!
I hope you do read it — I would be curious to hear what you think… I wonder if having siblings influenced my opinion…?