A couple of weeks ago, I talked about how books sometimes find their readers. Well. It happened again. Sort of. It’s like a story my high school psychology teacher told us once. One day, a college professor gave each of this students what he said was a personalized horoscope. Each student read theirs, and there was a lot of “oh my god that’s me!” and “Yes! That is exactly what’s going on in my life.” After a while, the professor told them to swap horoscopes with the person behind them. Turns out, everyone had the same one. The lesson here is that we read into things what we want to see. That we project our personal situations on the world around us. And, I guess, that horoscopes are bunk.
Maybe I’m projecting, but I know I can’t be the only one that had a few “Oh man, that’s totally me” reality checks while reading The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown. I hate to get all existential and weepy about things, but the truth is that there are times in everyone’s lives when you have to take a step back and evaluate. That’s what this book is about. Three sisters; Rosalind, Bianca, and Cordelia, all find themselves back home after years away. Each is dealing with a “now what” moment, trying to figure out what the next step is, and how the hell they got where they are in the first place.
As far as I can tell, there is no single moment when you realize you are an adult. It’s a series of small moments. Little things that make you realize you are not a kid anymore. Some more significant than others. Like the first time you see your parents weak. Or the first time you buy a car on your own. The night you realize you can have cereal for dinner and nobody can call you on it. When your friends start to have kids. Or the first time you see a gaggle of high school girls and think “man, was I that annoying at that age?”
You also realize you are an adult when you start wondering what you are doing with your life. When you find yourself questioning if the dreams you had when you were young are the life you want to live now. In their own way, each sister is dealing with her own crisis. Each is figuring out what their life has meant so far and where it is going. Facing hard truths about themselves and each other, they are forced to deal with reality. And well, they are forced to grow up. Dare you to find me a 30something who hasn’t had to go through that.
You can’t talk about The Weird Sisters without talking about the way it’s written. Brown uses the first person plural voice. She says it’s because, “this is a story about family, and one of the ideas I wanted to raise is that we carry our families of origin with us always. They help form the way in which we see the world, for better or worse, and no matter how we may feel about them now, they are a part of us.” It’s an unusual choice. A brave one. One I think works really well here. But one that also makes the book sort of confusing in some spots. It’s as if the sisters, their relationships, their shared history and experiences have a voice. It takes some getting used to. And in some areas it pulls you out of the story wondering who this “we” is and who’s talking.
Don’t let that scare you. The Weird Sisters in an incredible read. Anyone with a family will relate to the way siblings love and fight with the same urgency. Anyone who has had to question their future, their place in the world, who has wondered how those faded dreams of the life they were going to have turned into the sharp reality of the life they are living, will seem themselves in each of the sisters. I know I do. Or maybe I’m just projecting.
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