I think this is the first time that I gave more review stars than the average Goodreads rating was. I listened to The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown as the March book club choice. Yes, I’m a month ahead but I got it quickly on audio and listened to it while I exercised for a week, easy to kill off an audio book in that amount of time.
The father of these Weird Sisters was a Shakespeare professor at a university and each girl was given a name from one of the Bard’s works. Shakespeare didn’t use the term Weird Sister to mean “that thing is so weird” but to mean “fated.” The sisters all felt stuck in their familial roles each playing out their archetype until they began failing in life.
Each returns to their hometown after their life failure (loss of job, embezzlement, unplanned pregnancy) under the pretense of helping their mother who was diagnosed with cancer. The story is about how they break free from their roles and find they are more than the sum of their parts.
Brown uses the gimmick of using a collective narrative voice for the 3 women, referring to “us” and “we” instead of “her” and “she.” I found it fun but have heard that others found it annoying.
Coming from a family where roles were ingrained, I liked this Jungian exploration. I related to the escapades and how it feels to be hemmed in by expectations.
