Book Review

Book Review: The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown

“The Weird Sisters” is one of those serendipitous reads that happens when you are in between books, are about to get on the train home and stop into a newsstand to see the new magazine covers. You see a book that looks interesting, read a few pages and are instantly hooked. Before you know it, you are deep into a book that really had no right jumping to the top of the reading queue. (My reading queue is years long. If you’ve recommended a book to me, it’s on a list, I just might die before I get to it. But I do have every intention of getting to it. )

Eleanor Brown’s debut novel is a lot like the Joy of Cooking’s chocolate chip cookie recipe. If you follow the recipe exactly and are careful and diligent you will be rewarded with very tasty, perfectly chewy, always reliable chocolate chip cookies. There are no surprises, you know exactly what you are getting and it’s a pretty fool-proof operation. The Weird Sisters pretty much follows a set formula- I could have predicted the ending for you just from reading the back cover. All of the elements of a fabulous light read are in place. The author makes you care about the characters, even though there are strong archetypes at play. There is a clear voice in the narrator. She draws a tight circle to explore – sisterly relationships – and doesn’t stray outside it.

In this novel, three sisters, named after Shakespearean characters by their professor father, return to their childhood home in a college town in Ohio after being burned by the harshness of the modern world. The main cautionary tale here is the danger in defining yourself in relation to other people. The sisters are on the innocent’s journey, showing that the power to change was really inside themselves all along. It is a story that rings true. There was a research article, read not too long ago, that the influence of siblings is perhaps the most underrated aspect of an individual’s development. The journeys that the Andreas sisters go through are so universally understood it’s no wonder the book is a success. The message underneath rings true enough despite the somewhat formulaic treatment. All in all, it was an extremely enjoyable book, even if it does have the stamp of “light read”. Light, airy, just sweet enough –but was not controversial, extremely educational or groundbreaking. It was a book I enjoyed, no more and no less.