sometimes you can't just hug it out

After recently reading many reviews of Eleanor Brown's new book, The Weird Sisters, (and seeing it on a couple summer book club lists) I decided to order it. What caught my attention was not only the title's references to the three witches in Shakespeare's MacBeth, but also a quote from the book:

"See, we love each other. We just don't like each other very much." --refering to the relationship among the three main characters in the story
 
That's something I often think about my relationship with my sister (if I'm being honest with myself), and after another bout of arguments with her lately, this just felt apropo...as much as I love my Lizzie and Jane Bennet, and my Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, I needed something else.

Summary: The story follows as the Andreas sisters wind up back in their parents home, in the middle of nowhere Ohio, not long after finding out their mother has cancer. The story follows the sisters, named for Shakespearean beauties, sisters Rose (Rosalind--As You Like It), Bean (Bianca--Taming of the Shrew), and Cordy (Cordelia--King Lear)--their dad is a, yep you guessed it, professor of Shakespeare--weaving in and out of their lives and fuck ups, sometimes expounding on how each feels she must live up to her Shakespearean namesake--this felt a bit of a stretch.

Pros:
  • It doesn't offer that let's-hug-it-out-and-fix-everything hokey quality that you find in tons of books about families
  • If you love Shakespeare you'll love how much he comes up/gets quoted
  • The book is a fast read (I read it in a few hours time on Memorial Day)
  • Interesting use of plural narration 
Cons:
  • If you don't love Shakespeare you'll hate how much he comes up/gets quoted
  • Even if you do love Shakespeare you might start to think, he comes up too much and really, who quotes Shakespeare this much?
  • It's not the best literature you'll ever read, more like a take-along-to-the-beach novel
  • Needed more character development

My take in a nutshell: It was light reading.
Would I recommend it? Oddly I did...to my sister...no lie. To some of my friends: yes. To serious literati? NO

 

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