On the Shelf: Sisterland

SISTERLAND | CURTIS SITTENFELD | RANDOM HOUSE | JUNE 2013

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.

Sisterland caught my attention the moment I heard about the novel. Stories focused on siblings always have a special characteristic to them. Relationships between family members are so strong and complicated. Add in psychic abilities, and it was certain to me that the relationship between Kate and Vi in Sisterland would be a special one.

The novel begins with the prediction of an earthquake, so the rest of the book leaves you anxiously waiting. What's going to happen on the predicted day in October and how will the result affect the characters in Sisterland?

I expected the novel to really focus on the relationship between Kate and Vi, but the story was more like a summation of Kate's life. Vi is obviously an important part of this story (they are identical twins, after all), but the decisions Kate made in the past and the state of her current life are often far removed from her sister.

Kate is likeable enough, and I really enjoyed learning her story, but she is almost intolerable at certain points. Vi is definitely eccentric, but there isn't too much revealed about her beyond that. Sisterland is narrated by Kate, so we really only get to see Vi through her sister's eyes. Strangely, I loved many of the minor characters in Sisterland more than the twins. I don't want to mention them in any detail, for fear of spoiling future readers, but this novel has a great cast of characters.

By the end of the story, Sisterland did not take the direction that I expected. An event near the end of the novel angered me so much that I was actually torn about whether I wanted to finish the novel or not. (I did.) This anger is proof at how carefully Sittenfeld has crafted these characters. Strong emotion is nothing but evidence of strong writing. Sisterland is character-heavy in development, and a definite recommendation for fans of literary fiction.