Book Review: The Story Sisters: A Novel: Alice Hoffman: Books
Book Review: The Story Sisters: A Novel: Alice Hoffman: Books
Story telling,
By E. A Solinas “ea_solinas” (MD USA) -
(TOP 10 REVIEWER)
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.
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