Book Review: The Weird Sisters

I've completed another book for the BlogHer Book Club. This book was titled The Weird Sisters, written by Eleanor Brown. 

The title is a reference to Shakespeare's Weird Sisters in Macbeth. And, in Shakespeare the word "weird" actually means something closer to fate. So the titled could be The Fated Sisters or Fate Sisters. 

The family in this book quotes Shakespeare to each other to communicate. Not every word or anything, but a lot of the honest, life lessons are quoted through Shakespeare. The story takes the reader through three sisters and their quest to figure out what to do with their lives. Their "fate." 

It's a nice story, but I found a few things odd. 

1. The novel is written in first person plural. We hear the story as if "The Sisters" were telling it together as one voice. For example, "Our mother was one to get lost in her thoughts, and Rose often had to make dinner." Rose is one of the sisters. See how that's strange? It's an unusual voice to write it, and it made it unique, but a little strange. 

2. The mother of these sisters is battling breast cancer throughout the book. We're told that when the sisters were young, she would often get consumed in her own thoughts and burn dinner or leave the girls unsupervised somewhere. So we know she's kind of aloof, and with her illness, she plays in the background. However, she is never named. We don't ever find out her name. Why? I don't know. We learn of the sisters' father's name through interactions with other people, but never her mother. Is this some statement about the lack of mothering and how that leaves the girls wandering through life looking for a purpose? 

Maybe.

To be honest, I'm not sure. I didn't feel like I got to deeply know any of the characters so it is difficult to know what I was suppose to learn. 

I will be following the conversations over at the BlogHer Book Club this month to see what other people thought about the oddities in the book. 

If you're interested, click here for more information and to see if I just missed the point entirely. 

 "This is a paid review for BlogHer Book Club, but the opinions expressed are my own."