Booknote: Sister by Rosamund Lupton

When my grandma Elsie died, one of the things we had to decide what to do with was her collection of paperback murder mysteries. There were literally hundreds of them, in boxes in her basement. So I should be genetically inclined to enjoy reading them, but generally I don't. I think it's the formulaic aspect: the detective, who is ____________ (brilliant, bumbling, damaged, superhumanly strong, or some other adjective, take your pick), picks up a case, figures out who did it, and moves on to the next case. The convenient piece of evidence, or the murderer's stupid mistake, or the brilliant detective's ah-ha moment solves the crime.

Written out like that, it might be hard to see why I don't like them. I mean...perhaps that's just how it really works for detectives working on murder cases.

They just aren't my thing to read.

Still, when I read a review of Rosamund Lupton's murder mystery novel, Sister, I had to read it. (I thought the review I'd read was from NPR, but actually it was at Kirkus.) Not really for the murder-mystery aspect, but for how hard this realization hit me: one day, one of my sisters will die. Or maybe I'll die first. While I know, of course, that people die, reading a review about a book about a woman trying to figure out who murdered her sister and made it look like a suicide somehow made that thought seem real. Someday three of us will live without one of us; one day only one sister out of four will be left.

Is that a crazy reason to read a book? I don't know, but it's what made me look it up on the library catalog and then do a little happy dance when I saw that it had already been ordered and was, in fact, nearly ready to check out. And no one else was waiting for it. So I got to read it first.

Sisters tells the story of Beatrice Hemming, who receives a phone call during a Sunday lunch party at her apartment in New York, telling her that her sister Tess is missing. Since Tess is sort of flighty—that artistic personality of hers—Beatrice is initially more annoyed than alarmed, but she still rushes to London to help her mother find her sister. Except there will be no rescuing Tess, who was 8 months pregnant with a child fathered by her married art tutor; her baby was stillborn and she has, apparently, committed suicide in her grief.

Except Beatrice knows her sister would never do that. Mostly she is certain because she knows her sister; part of that knowledge is that they both watched their brother die from cystic fibrosis when they were kids. Beatrice knows that that experience taught Tess that life was too valuable to waste. Unfortunately, Beatrice's knowledge about her sister is not enough to convince the detectives, who find reasons to explain away the evidence she uncovers.

Even though it is a murder mystery, it didn't feel like one—didn't feel cliched and formulaic. It was creepy and intriguing and puzzling and sometimes so gothically good it gave me chills. But even better than the spine tingles and the how-will-this-turn-out anxiety, Sisters is a beautifully written novel; it just happens to be about a murder. Beatrice, who is the oldest sister, reminded me the teensiest bit of myself, especially as she sees how her shortcomings and mistakes unfolded to create an opportunity for her sister's death. The mystery was intriguing; I didn't figure it out until Beatrice did, and the ending? I completely loved the ending, which is nothing you would ever anticipate.

But what I loved most was (as with all novels I love) the writing itself. It's written as a letter from Beatrice to Tess, a technique that allows Beatrice to tell the story of uncovering the murderer while she simultaneously writes about Tess's death and its effect on her. "Was the feeling that all is right with the world, my world," Beatrice wonders at Tess's funeral, "because you were its foundations, formed in childhood and with me grown into adulthood?" How does a person go on as the only sister left?

Which really is why I read the book in the first place. Whether the motivation was to examine the death of someone else's sister so I could have an inkling of what it would be like to lose my own, or to exorcise my fear of being the only sister left one day, I'm not sure. But it did, somehow, do both. It reminded me that I am not in Beatrice's shoes; I still have my sisters with me. And, even more than that, it reminded me to live what Tess called the sacrament of the present moment—to take nothing for granted and to live without fear, as if you are flying.

Comments

[karen]

i will add this to my list Amy thank you! I'm not a mystery reader either but I always keep an open mind for a good book :)

[Jamie]

the sacrament of the present moment—to take nothing for granted and to live without fear, as if you are flying.

what would that be like. to live without fear?
It sounds awfully nice at my present moment.