Sisterland - Curtis Sittenfeld

Curtis Sittenfeld, New York Times bestselling author of American Wife and Prep, returns with a mesmerizing novel of family and identity, loyalty and deception, and the delicate line between truth and belief.

From an early age, Kate and her identical twin sister, Violet, knew that they were unlike everyone else. Kate and Vi were born with peculiar “senses”—innate psychic abilities concerning future events and other people’s secrets. Though Vi embraced her visions, Kate did her best to hide them.

Now, years later, their different paths have led them both back to their hometown of St. Louis. Vi has pursued an eccentric career as a psychic medium, while Kate, a devoted wife and mother, has settled down in the suburbs to raise her two young children. But when a minor earthquake hits in the middle of the night, the normal life Kate has always wished for begins to shift. After Vi goes on television to share a premonition that another, more devastating earthquake will soon hit the St. Louis area, Kate is mortified. Equally troubling, however, is her fear that Vi may be right. As the date of the predicted earthquake quickly approaches, Kate is forced to reconcile her fraught relationship with her sister and to face truths about herself she’s long tried to deny.

Funny, haunting, and thought-provoking, Sisterland is a beautifully written novel of the obligation we have toward others, and the responsibility we take for ourselves. With her deep empathy, keen wisdom, and unerring talent for finding the extraordinary moments in our everyday lives, Curtis Sittenfeld is one of the most exceptional voices in literary fiction today.

As I quite liked Prep when I read it a little over a year ago, when I read the back of the new Sittenfeld novel, I was eager to read it. I love novels that deal with the paranormal and the ambiguities with the social acceptance of it. The idea of these two sisters fighting on opposite sides and dealing with their lives in their own ways sounded really interesting and with the skill that I knew Sittenfeld had, I was happy to try the book out.

The book weaves in and out of the "present" narrative (which is actually three or so years in the past) and the story of Vi and Kate as they grow in a world where they have powers other people don't. They get teased in school, they know things they shouldn't and they deal with an absent mother and a distant father. Kate just wants to be normal, the horrible teasing she goes through in middle school scarring her from embracing her gift while Violet, not great at making friends, finds a guardian spirit (whom she calls Guardian) that she trusts in and fully embraces her gift. 

Kate's family, from her relationship with her father and her sister to her family dynamic with her husband and two children, are very well drawn and feel real. I especially love the way her two year old daughter Rosie's dialogue is written. It's cute and young and innocent without sounding too much like an adult writing a child's voice. 

I was absolutely absorbed in this novel from the first and I eagerly read it before bed and at breaks during work. However, about fifty pages before the end, there was a sudden plot twist that kind of ruined the book for me. I'm a very open-minded reader (as you can tell by looking at all the genres I cover in this blog) but there is one thing that I just absolutely hate reading about and avoid in all my media. And then bam! There it is! In the middle of the book I was really enjoying.

Did this ruin the book for me forever? No, I suppose not. But it did sour the ending of it for me and knock it down a peg. I would have given this a solid four stars had it not been for that plot twist but now I give it more of a three. I loved it. I really did. I just didn't like where it took me.

Prep - Curtis Sittenfeld

Prep is one of those books that I remember coming out because I remember the cover. It's all white with a green and pink belt wrapped around it. I remember seeing that book on a table at Borders way back in 2005 and thinking 'That looks pretty good.' Of course, I didn't read it until 2012 but the point is, I remembered it the minute I saw it on the shelf at the library and grabbed it right away. And who says you can't judge a book by its cover?

Prep tells the story of Lee Fiora, a young girl from South Bend, Illinois, who decides, somewhat on a whim, that she wants to go to boarding school on the east coast. She convinces her parents, fills out the forms and never really believes it's going to happen until it does and she finds herself at Ault, an exclusive boarding school just outside of Boston. Each chapter takes place in a certain period of her four years at Ault, from the first semester of her freshman year to her graduation. Friends come and go, teachers root for her and dislike her, and boys seem ever present but eternally far away. In general, it's high school.

Now, I never went to boarding school but Sittenfeld did and you can tell from the novel that most of it must have been based on real experiences. She is able to draw a complete and engrossing picture of Ault because she has such experience to rely on. There is no doubt in your mind that the bank boys exist, that floral bedsheets are a status symbol and no one goes to the mall on free weekends. It all connects into a completely realized picture of a separate society of students and teachers who have little access to the world outside Ault. 

I may have not gone to a boarding school but I did go to a prep school and parts of Ault really resonated with me. The bits about the rich kids and the poorer kids getting along but secretly knowing just who they really were. Money not being spoken of but on everyone's minds. Cool kids acting like nothing in life could bother them and not as cool kids just trying to get by. Grades being a top priority and people not just being wealthy but smart, as well. Don't get me wrong; I loved my high school but anyone could see that similar situations were abundant there. It added a touch of realism for me I don't know was there for everyone.

Lee Fiora is a complicated character and I don't know if she would suit everyone's tastes. I've heard her described as a modern day female Holden Caufield and I can see where that is coming from. Lee is both very much and not at all your average teenage girl. She has a crush on the coolest boy in school. She worries about her grades (but perhaps not as much as she should.) She likes to sit in her dorm room and read magazines instead of going to chapel. She loves her best friend Martha but sometimes she drives her crazy. 

Sittenfeld goes farther than that with Lee, however. Lee has issues that she never really addresses in the novel. She has problems with showing enthusiasm. Despite always wanting to be a part of things, she never really lets herself, preferring to be detached. She never goes to school dances to the point where, when she considers maybe going along, her friends don't even think about inviting her anymore. She lets a boy use her, despite the fact that she knows full well what's happening. I've read quite a few reviews on this book (while waiting for a friend at the park) and it's astounding how many people just hate Lee because of all this. I'm not going to lie; sometimes I thought Lee was being a bit of a douche. But who isn't when they're fifteen? 

Sittenfeld doesn't go the obvious route with her "teenage angst", she has a girl who is all the ugliness of puberty as well as some of the good. And that's what I found refreshing. There's a chapter where Lee's parents come to visit her and Lee, despite wanting to see them and loving them so much she can't stand it, is horrifically embarrassed by them and finds herself being short with them, despite it all. She gets into a giant fight with her father and it all turns horribly wrong. And you feel every instant of it. You're instantly transported back to being sixteen and loving your parents but never wanting to be seen with them. There's even a bit where Lee wishes they could just go into Boston and be themselves, that she'd even let her mother take a picture of her inside a restaurant. But she can't be their little girl and who she has created at Ault at the same time. And I think that's something everyone who was ever a teenager remembers somewhat painfully.

Prep is not a feel good novel but it's not a downer either. It's a book about being a teenager, with all that entails, good and bad. I loved the end, how Lee both loved and hated Ault and didn't know what to do with herself. I loved everything being confusing. It was messy and it hurt but sometimes it made you smile. And that's why I liked it.