The Weird Sisters

I was shopping in North Carolina while visiting family and stumbled upon this book at Barnes and Nobles (an actual bookstore...gasp!). If you pick up this book thinking it's going to be about a strange or odd group of sisters you'd be wrong. I've seen several negative reviews on this book that claim the sisters aren't weird, but ordinary. Well, I'm not sure how they missed it, but the "weird sisters" is from Shakespeare although you don't need to be an expert on him to get the book.

Here is the book description from Amazon.com:


"Three sisters have returned to their childhood home, reuniting the eccentric Andreas family. Here, books are a passion (there is no problem a library card can't solve) and TV is something other people watch. Their father-a professor of Shakespeare who speaks almost exclusively in verse-named them after the Bard's heroines. It's a lot to live up to.
The sisters have a hard time communicating with their parents and their lovers, but especially with one another. What can the shy homebody eldest sister, the fast-living middle child, and the bohemian youngest sibling have in common? Only that none has found life to be what was expected; and now, faced with their parents' frailty and their own personal disappointments, not even a book can solve what ails them..."

I must admit that I picked this up because of the, "there is no problem a library card can't solve," quote. I could also relate to this book because, like the mother in the story, my own mother suffered from breast cancer. The sisters, Rosalind (Rose), Bianca (Bean), and Cordelia (Cordy) are sisters that love each other, but just don't like each other very much. After their mother's diagnosis, all the sisters come back home to live. Rose, the oldest, is the responsible one and moves in to help her parents. However, Bean and Cordy are running from their past and have their own problems to deal with.

I liked the book a lot and it only took me two days to finish it, but there were a few slow spots. I loved the first person plural narrative - the use of "we" to describe the thoughts of the sisters. I also loved how believable they were in their interactions with each other. Overall, I would recommend this book to others and was glad that it caught my attention in NC.

Kimmie :-)