The Story Sisters: A Novel [Paperback]

 

 

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Reason for Reading: I've become a big fan of magical realism over the last year or so and Alice Hoffman was an author on my list, so I figured why not start with her new book.

Comments: Well, I hardly know where to start with this book. What is this book about? It's the story of three sisters who live in a fantasy world of their own creation. Two of them hold a dark secret, but one of them holds the darkest secret of all. It's a story of a mother's loves as she tries to raise her daughters single handedly. The girls grow up, let go of their fantasy world (though parts will never leave them) and face the pain of real life. This is a story of the fantastical, a family saga, a harsh, dark realism and ultimate redemption.

I'll start by saying I really, really enjoyed this book. But I also have to say there were parts when I just didn't get it. Each chapter starts with a few paragraphs of an italicized story from the fantasy world, at least that's what I thought at the beginning, but by the end I had no idea what they were about or what their purpose served. The first half of the book when the girls are young and living in the fantasy world is beautiful. The language and atmosphere is so fairy tale-like. It's pure delight to read but even at this stage glimpses of the dark secret are seen and the power of even the smallest glimpse of this evil into such serene surroundings is shiver-inducing. As events unfold the author throws a stunning shock at the reader and the atmosphere becomes more realistic, heavier and darker.

The characters are marvelous. I just loved every single one of them, even the ones that I didn't particularly like as people. They were just so well written I could visualize and hear each one of them. Truly brilliant characterization! The writing as a whole is beautiful, the family saga is compelling and heart-wrenching while the fantasy elements are always present whether in full force or just as tiny flickers. It's still a book I have to give some thought to, though. This has given me a taste for Alice Hoffman and I plan on reading her again.

A title like "The Story Sisters" could be any kind of book -- and in the case of Alice Hoffman's writing, it means that the girls are "story" by name and by nature. While the story focuses too much on one troubled sister and has a rather rushed ending, it's still a mistily moving experience, and a look at what love can bring people.

Ever since their parents' divorce, the three Story sisters -- Elv, Meg and Claire -- have been wrapped up in a fairy-tale world of fairies, roses and otherworldly queens.

And the girls are inseparable, speaking their Arnish language and listening to Elv's magical stories. But when Elv spends time in Paris, she comes back a changed girl -- she is increasingly drawn into a world of teenage rebellion, sex and drugs, even as she still tries to break free of the mortal world. And her increasingly ugly behavior fractures her relationship with her sisters -- even a trip to a rehab/high-school doesn't help.

Then Elv's wild ways result in a devastating tragedy that tears her family apart, and drives her into the arms of a loving, charming conman. In the years that follow, the girls' mother Annie is confronted by both love and illness, and a devastated Claire immerses herself in a jewelry store in Paris, living with her grandmother. Elv's life continues on a downward spiral, until a new development brings the broken family back together.

Leaves and roses, ice and water, black tattoos and blood, tomatoes and jewels, and three black-haired daughters who gradually learn that life is only a fairy tale if you keep it that way, and that imagination alone cannot make a life beautiful. "The Story Sisters" is a vivid piece of work, and Alice Hoffman proves that she's able to wrap even nasty stuff (like heroin addiction and rape) in a veil of magical realism.

Hoffman's writing is beautifully lush and vivid, overflowing of natural descriptions and striking phrases (such as pasts being stitched to shadows with black thread). And as the years unwind, she explores the effects of death, illness, and sometimes of new love from unexpected sources. But she also explores some of the seedier parts of life through Elv, including child molestation, drug addiction and a fiery affair with "the one who turns me inside out."

That in fact is the biggest problem -- there's such a focus on Elv that the other characters are eclipsed. It might have been better if the book had been called "The Story Sister." Much of the last few chapters are concerned with Claire, but so rushed that she never quite grows a personality beyond "sullen emo girl."

Elv herself is not very sympathetic -- her passionate, ethereal nature gets a bad bruising over the course of the book, but she often gets so nasty and reckless that it's hard to care much. Her overstressed mother Anna is far more likable, especially when she strikes up a doomed romance with a kindly detective; and the "ama" Natalia is a vibrant old lady who just wants her family happy and together.

"The Story Sisters" suffers from an overemphasis on Elv, but the exquisite writing and awkward explorations of "real life" make this worth a look.

What is a tale of the love between three sisters, rapidly turns into a searing portrayal of one sister who lives on the edge as she descends into a world of drug abuse and crime. At the center of The Story Sisters is the relationship between Elv, Meg and Claire Story who share a power circle of intrigue and imagination, their young lives constantly swamped by the faery realm where women have wings and it is possible to read the thoughts of another world that of Arnelle and its secret language. Although their mother Annie loves her daughters equally, and for the most part the sisters have loving magical childhood, it seems as though the dark-haired Elv has the strength, credibility and a healthy dose of glamour to get whatever she wants.

Against the suburban background of North Point Harbor, the girls' respective fates are cemented when Elv rescues Claire from the evil seductions of a child molester, the three sisters understanding the bond that know one could break. Yet it is Elv who pays the ultimate price, the event shaping much of her life that follows. On the night of an anniversary party for their grandparents, the seeds of Elv's malcontent is also sown. There's an accident in Central Park and for the first time the injured Claire is faced with Elv's reckless ways along with death, broken bones, and a trail of blood, while Elv's mind gradually fills with demons that she doesn't want her sisters to hear.

A novel of inner monsters and women with black wings, Hoffman spins the world of the Story sisters in a gray thread. The novel is portrait of three very different girls: while Elv is the "girl who refused to be broken, who refused to feel pain," Meg reads novels, and Claire loves ice-cream and art, all three in love with the romance that is Paris. It is only Elv who holds the lion's share of attention, over time, becoming a powerful, indifferent and elusive girl who beings to explore the human world with her shorn black dresses and black boots, her kohl lined eyes, her nails painted black along with the two black stars tattooed above each shoulder.

With Elv's life descending into drugs and crime, laced with self-loathing and rebelliousness, the landscape of the sisters shift when she enters the Westfield rehab center and then meets Lorry, a junkie and petty criminal. Elv is mesmerized by this bad boy, turned inside out with love. Being close to him was like being in another world, this man who had bad habits but tells her that he can control his excesses. It seems as though Elv is unable to break free of her new lover's hold. With complicated and vulnerable characters at the novel's center, Hoffman refuses to shy away from her central themes - the price of love and family loyalty, and how one family must ultimately cope with the ramifications of a good girl suddenly gone bad. Powerful images abound: a robin necklace, a tattoo of roses, the language of made up words that sound like birdsong. In the end, this novel is a graceful and also harrowing personal journey, an intimate snapshot of a young girl lost and on the brink of hell, her innocence ultimately fragmented and torn apart by the demons of her mind. Mike Leonard June 09.

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