The Sister by Poppy Adams
Release date: 2008 / 273 pages
Synopsis (from jacket cover): From her lookout in the crumbling mansion that was her childhood home, Ginny watches and waits for her younger sister to arrive. Vivien has not set foot in the house since she left nearly fifty years ago; the reclusive Ginny has rarely ventured out, retreating into the precise routings that define her days, carrying on her father’s solitary work studying moths. As the sisters revisit their shared past, they realize that their recollections differ in essential and unsettling ways…
First line: “It’s ten to two in the afternoon and I’ve been waiting for my little sister, Vivi, since one-thirty.”
Review: We are lucky, as readers, to know others who can unerringly predict what we will enjoy. My friend Anna is one of those people for me, and her record remains unbroken with this recommendation. The Sister is not for everyone, however. Dark, creepy, and unbalancing it is – as well as beautifully written and painstakingly wrought. If I still taught advanced literature, I would love to teach this as the perfect example of an unreliable narrator. This concept is hard to describe – and even harder to do well – but Poppy Adams has nailed it!
Virginia (Ginny) tells us about her life, a story filled with tragedy and intrigue, but delivers it as a scientist would. She has devoted her life to becoming a lepidopterist – one who studies moths – and has a chilling, yet fascinating “voice” that allows her to examine her own life and the lives of her family through the logical lens of science. Adams’ prose, through Ginny, is beautiful and flowing – and the novel reads very, very quickly. Here is a taste:
“I like winter. I like its contradictions: cold but cozy, sparse but beautiful, lifeless but not soulless. The fences were smoothed with ice, the ground white, crunchy. The trees shut themselves down, skeletons standing firm against the winds, and the ones that line the top of the ridge, exposed and bent like wizened old men, were said in these parts to bear the souls of the dead.”
While it’s hard to “warm” to Ginny, she is so fascinating we can’t look away. Then, Ginny’s sister Vivian arrives and we are forced to second-guess everything Ginny has told us. The clever/amazing/intriguing thing is, we really do not empathize with or even necessarily believe Vivi either – at this point, we are in Ginny’s camp, and Vivi isn’t terribly likeable anyway. As Vivi tells Ginny the “truth” about herself, Ginny blocks her diatribe from her mind, so we are not privy to either perspective at that point. The effect is a thrilling sense of unbalance – at times forcing this reader to even question my own perception of reality.
I’m a bit at a loss to recommend this to a specific type of reader, although it would be wonderful for book clubs – probably the best book club book I’ve read in a quite a while. You wouldn’t even need discussion questions, honestly; the book just lends itself to a rousing debate without even trying. However, it is dark. Quite dark. So, you may need to gauge your club’s openness to creepy, mysterious, fiction before recommending it. I, for one, loved it.
Wow, this sounds great. I’ve been looking for more creepy books! Thanks for the review.
I bet you’ll like it!! If you give it a try, let me know what you thought…!
I’d really like to read this one.
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