The Story Sisters: A Novel by Alice HoffmanMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
The Story Sisters was so dark that I considered putting it down. Alice Hoffman is such an excellent writer that I was transfixed as much as I was repulsed.
The three Story sisters are so close that they invent their own world as youngsters. They have their own language and their mother feels quite left out. After a tragic event effects Elv and Claire as young girls, they grow inseparable and the third sister, Meg, feels more and more left out. Elv and Claire tell no one what happened and Elv's sense of reality blurs. Claire feels responsible but keeps Elv's secret. Elv looks for relief from her pain in sex and drugs and spirals out of control.
As you read the story, you realize that things are often not what they seem. The kid you see on the street corner, the kid that alienates himself from his family, the anti-social kid on the playground may have a reason for having changed so drastically from the kid he was a few years before. This is a difficult story to read but worth sticking with it until the end.
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