The Weird Sisters

by Eleanor Brown

[Leah]

I can’t really say what it was about The Weird Sisters that drew me to it. I like the two different covers; one UK, one American and they’re vastly different to each other. I liked the synopsis, too, until I got to the ‘Shakespeare’ part, which put me off for reasons I will indeed explain. (Although Shakespeare enthusiasts should probably look away for their own sanity. You can’t say you weren’t warned.) I was browsing the Kindle store and couldn’t find something to read, until I read the sample for The Weird Sisters and I was immediately intrigued, so much so that I went ahead and bought it (as you do). I’m really pleased I did, despite fearing it wasn’t a book I would like.

“We became home because we were failures,” begins The Weird Sisters and that quote only really made sense to me once I’d completed the book, but it’s a wonderful quote even before I knew what it meant. I liked how the Prologue set the novel up. It’s only short, maybe a page and a half but it sets the story up. We learn about the girls’ dad, who is a Shakespeare professor and we learn their mother is ill, which leads to them all coming home. We see where the girls are currently living; Cordy is travelling, Bean is in New York and Rose is living with her fiance Jonathan as they prepare for the journey back to Barney, back to where they grew up. Rose is a homebody, so coming home for her isn’t an issue, in fact it’s what she lives for whereas the opposite is true for Cordy and Bean. They hate being in such a small town.

What makes The Weird Sisters unique (to me, at least; I’m sure there are many novels that feature William Shakespeare but this is the first I’ve read) is the Shakespeare factor. The Andreas family are voracious readers and their dad is a Shakespeare professor, so it rather goes without saying that the girls lives are very much soaked into Shakespeare. They’re named after Shakespeare’s characters: Cordelia, Rosalind, Bianca. The title of the novel comes from Shakespeare and the girls and their dad consistently quote sentences written by the bard himself. Now comes the difficult part. For me. My knowledge of Shakespeare is shaky. I know he wrote Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet amongst others. I know he’s revered. But I’ve never read a piece of Shakespeare’s work so I truly thought the amount of Shakespeare in the novel would put me off, but it didn’t. Sure, some of the quotes made me scratch my head (metaphorically speaking) but for the most part I could get the general jist of them.

I found the sisters fascinating. Usually in novels sisters are as close as anything, but not Rose, Cordy and Bean. They might look alike, have some of the same mannerisms and be brilliantly stubborn but they’re not close, not even a little bit. Rose is the eldest, the sensible one, planning a wedding to Jonathan, whom she met at the school where she teaches. Cordy’s the youngest, the baby of the family, who’s known for her wanderlust and her inability to stay in one place for any stretch of time. Then there’s Bean, the middle sister, the black sheep of the family who doesn’t know her place. Isn’t as sensible as Rose, isn’t as delicate as Cordy and who’s trying to find exactly what it is that’s her talent, the thing that makes her stand out. I found them each to be maddening in some areas but wonderful in others and I liked how they were all forced to interact with each other when they came home to look after their sick mother.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Weird Sisters, Shakespeare and all. I do wonder how much of the story itself is perhaps inspired by a Shakespeare play, so if anyone knows I’d love to know if it is, because I have no idea. It’s a very sensitive novel and I never felt as if Eleanor Brown put one sister ahead of the other. All three had secrets and wants and desires of their own and I felt happy to be in their company. It took my five days or so to read the novel and I was thrilled to climb into bed each night to devour more of the novel. I started the book with no pre-conceived notions, not really, and left it feeling happy to have known Cordy, Bean, Rose and their parents. I did find the writing style strange – I have since found out it’s first-person-plural narrative. Not that I can explain what it is; it wasn’t jarring or anything, in fact I found it fascinating, I just couldn’t get my head around it because I’ve never read prose like it before. I’ll be on the lookout for a second novel from Eleanor, I thoroughly enjoyed this one and would definitely recommend it, it was a wonderful book.