The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown
SUMMARY:
The Andreas sisters were raised on books – their family motto might as well be, ‘There’s no problem a library card can’t solve.’ Their father, a renowned, eccentric professor of Shakespearean studies, named them after three of the Bard’s most famous characters: Rose (Rosalind – As You Like It), Bean (Bianca – The Taming of the Shrew), and Cordy (Cordelia – King Lear), but they have inherited those characters’ failures along with their strengths.
Now the sisters have returned home to the small college town where they grew up – partly because their mother is ill, but mostly because their lives are falling apart and they don’t know where to go next. Rose, a staid mathematics professor, has the chance to break away from her quiet life and join her devoted fiance in England, if she could only summon up the courage to do more than she’s thought she could. Bean left home as soon as she could, running to the glamour of New York City, only to come back ashamed of the person she has become. And Cordy, who has been wandering the country for years, has been brought back to earth with a resounding thud, realizing it’s finally time for her to grow up.
The sisters never thought they would find the answers to their problems in each other, but over the course of one long summer, they find that everything they’ve been running from – each other, their histories, and their small hometown – might offer more than they ever expected.
The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown
Amy Einhorn Books, January 20, 2011
REVIEW:
The Weird Sisters (also known as the Three Witches) are characters in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Each “witch” represents a different catalyst of darkness, chaos and conflict. In Eleanor Brown‘s stunning debut novel, the Andreas sisters face lives that are spinning out of control. Rosalind (Rose), Bianca (Bean) and Cordelia (Cordy) have decided to return home to help care for their ailing mother and try to regain balance in their own tumultuous lives. Hoping to escape the harsh reality of failure and fear, rejection and despair, the sisters in turn find themselves trying to understand the most difficult and complex relationship of all, the bond of sisterhood. The girls must evaluate what really matters and look closely at the ties that bind. The luscious prose of this debut novel combined with a compelling plot and emotionally authentic characters results in one of the best books I have read all year and one I found myself savoring until the final page when I was sad to say goodbye to The Weird Sisters.
RATING: 5 STARS
