sisterly relationships
Between Sisters
It’s a long time since I read and reviewed Kristin Hannah‘s bestseller, The Nightingale. But it’s one of those exceptionally accomplished works that haunt you long after you close the covers. And such masterpieces make one wonder, how can this author possibly follow that?!
So, I wasn’t surprised to discover that Between Sisters didn’t reach such dizzy heights.
Meghann Dontess and Claire Cavenaugh are now polite (sometimes!) strangers who share a mother, a blood type and an ugly childhood. They grew up in a broken-down trailer, abandoned at a vulnerable age by their shallow actress mother, who is obsessed with celebrity and image. She has since lurched from husband to husband, making no move to be a parent beyond an occasional phonecall.
Meghann has emerged from her early years and troubled adolescence to become a successful lawyer, living alone in an expensive condominium in downtown Seattle, surrounded by the trappings of wealth and achievement. She has no desire to ‘settle down’, but has developed an unhealthy penchant for one-night stands with younger men. Now 42, lonely and scared of the future, she’s receiving psychiatric counselling, which highlights issues she had with her younger sister, Claire, when Meghann was 16.
Claire (35) lives more simply as assistant manager on her father’s 16 acre holiday resort, and loves her job. She shares her tiny cottage with a hotchpotch of renovated secondhand furniture, and her daughter Alison (5), lovingly supported by Claire’s biological father, Sam. Unlike Meg, Claire has a strong social metwork that includes a sisterhood of close friends.
But when she’s told that Claire is about to marry a country singer she’s known for a matter of mere weeks, Meghann rushes to her rescue. Thrown together in such circumstances after twenty years apart, the sisters discover truths about themselves as well as each other, and when tragedy strikes, they together fight for a future.
For me, the ends are tied up rather too neatly, but regardless of its relative literary merits or demerits, the themes of love and abandonment, estrangement and forgiveness, mercy killing and family crises, would make this a potential candidate for a book club discussion.