Book Review: Between Sisters

Title: Between Sisters

Author: Kristin Hannah

Publisher: Ballantine

Date: 2003

ISBN: 978-0-345-51946-7

Length: 459 pages

Quote: “My sister and I have problems, I’ll admit it. But nothing major. We’re just too busy to get together. Okay, she makes me crazy, the way she’s throwing her life away.”

Two aging sisters make a final heroic effort to pull their fractured family together. Their mother, an actress, walked out on them. Meghann, the older sister, mothered Claire until she was ready to go away and be the kind of lawyer who encourages women to stick it to their husbands in divorce cases. (Meghann talks to a counsellor who asks “When was the last time you slept with the same man twice?” Meghann’s not sure but she’s starting to find it more difficult to pick up younger men for one-night flings.) Claire, the younger sister, stayed with their father in an unprofitable resort business. Now this family want to bond again before one of them dies.

If you feel empathy for a family of people who keep making stupid life choices, you might enjoy this novel. I didn’t. My feeling is that, sure, readers like feeling that they’re smarter than fictional characters, but these characters overdo it. Reading about them is like talking to someone who obviously needs more help than you can give the person, or like watching a TV soap opera. So if you can watch a TV soap opera and feel motivated to watch the next segment rather than turn off the television set, Between Sisters is probably for you.

To be fair, Hannah says that accepting and pardoning family members’ stupidity is the point, so she’s probably exaggerated this fictional family’s dumbth on purpose to suggest that your family are probably much easier to pardon than this fictional family. Meh. Any writer should understand business decisions that place other considerations ahead of money, since all writers have by definition made those for ourselves, but lumping that together with things like Meghann's sexual behavior is unlikely to help readers achieve reconciliation.