Sisterland

by Curtis Sittenfeld

When the strongest earthquake in U.S. history occurs just north of their St. Louis home, Kate and Jeremy find the disaster further complicated by Kate's self-proclaimed medium twin's prediction about a more powerful earthquake, a situation that places Kate under public scrutiny and reveals her own psychic abilities. (general fiction).

Genres: Fiction, Book Club, Audiobook, Contemporary, Chick Lit, Adult Fiction, Adult

737 pages, Paperback

First published June 25, 2013

About the author

Curtis Sittenfeld is the New York Times bestselling author of six novels, including Rodham, Eligible, Prep, American Wife, and Sisterland, as well as the collection You Think It, I'll Say It. Her books have been translated into thirty languages. In addition, her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Washington Post Magazine, Esquire, and The Best American Short Stories, for which she has also been the guest editor. Her nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Time, and Vanity Fair, and on public radio's This American Life.

Reviews

[M · Rating 2 out of 5]

I would like to rename this book: "Exhaustively and Minutely Detailed Memoir of the Most Boring Person Ever."
Oy, Curtis, Curtis, Curtis.
This book read like an MFA program gone wrong. Stories should have details, yes, but ones like 'I sped up to get into the next lane, passing a van,' should not be one of them. And first person is a choice one makes when one has a personality - not when we are merely slogging through the day - and thoughts - of a person who is just words on a page.
I don't really get what makes this book a book - it would have been better serves as a long short story. It is essentially about two twins, Violet and Daisy (turned Kate) who know from a young age that they have "senses," ie, psychic abilities. Now, I have about zero tolerance for suspension of disbelief, but even I can get behind this premise; I am not convinced that there isn't something to this psychic thing, perhaps in small part because I myself have had senses if not downright dreams about things/predicted news that I had no reason to know ahead of time. In fact, the overall development of this concept has potential - Violet decides to turn her psychicness into a business whereas Kate, who becomes a wife and mom, prefers to leave the anxiety this brings behind (ie, is my kid sick? Is my gut twisting because yes she is or is this just nerves?) - coupled with the fact that Kate's husband is a scientist, and Kate's constant nagging that he fit his life around Violet's predictions create tension in the marriage (or at least they would if they were well developed characters), which also sets up a nice theme of intuition versus science.
The plot, however, wears rather thin. Overall it is about Violet's prediction that a devastating earthquake is headed towards their home town of St. Louis, and people really buy into this, and the entire book is pretty much centered around will there or will there not be one.
The issues, in addition to anorexic plot line, were as follows:
1. The central characters.
Violet and Kate were a lot like Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield (you all know who I mean). Violet, while wholly unlikable, is at least somewhat developed, but her development is largely her being a selfish jerk whose bad behavior is always reliant upon responsible, patience of a saint Kate. Kate's husband, Jeremy, is even MORE of a saint, and this gets really wearisome as the two are the biggest martyrs and also intensely dull.
2. The writing. It seems to me that Curtis has not truly inhabited a character before or since Prep. Prep, though I know many hated it, struck a real chord inside me, and I feel like a lot of this had to do with Curtis identifying strongly with her neurotic, self effacing narrator. But this book and that really awful one with the Laura Bush character, were both guilty of having faaaaaaaaar too many intense details about the character, being in her head waaayyyy too much, and leaving us no room to be in a story, let alone having no sense of who this person was outside the intensity of her thoughts.
3. The conclusion. I can't give this away, because all this book had going for it was the eventual suspense of 1. the earthquake and 2. something else, but the two things, especially the something else, hit a certain fevered pitched of utter unrealism, and the characters just got away with way too much and felt like people that I would never meet and frankly, even if they did exist, I wouldn't even want to.
I was really disappointed by this one, and if anything it serves as a really important lesson in writing: a character needs to stand on her own, needs to feel like a person rather than a collection of inane memories and observations. I read this book and thought, dear God, this is probably how my novel in progress sounds - yikes! I guess for that it was worth it.

[Claudia Putnam · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kind of horrified. I have loved CS's other books and was looking forward to this one. I didn't mind the topic. I thought it might be interesting in the hands of a truly literary author who had always gone deeply into her characters' minds. And what mind might be more interesting than this one?

Till we find out more about Kate.

(One question that I just have to get off my chest: WHO complains about a guy taking too long to come? WHO DOES THAT? I guess maybe when you've got young children you might be in a hurry. And maybe if you have psychic abilities something about that ensures that you ALWAYS come in 3 minutes. But guys, if you read this book, PLEASE don't get the idea that this is how women work. By all means, take your time.)

However, as I think about it, CS picks characters who hide their potential, who MIGHT be interesting IF... If they did not constrain themselves with the expectations of others--what they believe their boarding school peer group expects of them, what their husband's career demands of them, and in this case, what this woman's middle school cohort thought of her, and which she never appears to have grown out of.

So again we have a woman trying to live within the bounds of convention. However, maybe CS hasn't got this memo, but this isn't an especially interesting story for contemporary women. Most of us, by the time we're 30, don't bother shaving our legs that often or really care that much what other people think. We have our friends--usually more than just one neighbor friend--we just do what we like. Even if we stayed home... I dunno. I don't remember it being so suffocating. I remember writing groups and people to hike with and rock climb with and ski with and horseback ride with (and no, it wasn't especially a rich area, people just had horses tossed out in their back pastures). People to change off watching the kids with so we could go do this stuff. *Because we weren't nutcases about whether the kid might eat a blueberry.*

Anyhow, it's not exactly gripping, is it? Is Kate going to lose the acceptance of... of... of... whom? Her neighbors? We never meet them. Her boss? She doesn't have one. Her husband? He puts up with everything.

Well, I shouldn't say the novel didn't keep my attention. It did. Unlike so many of the flashback-laden stories that seem to be infesting the contemporary fiction market right now, this one at least had re-lived, rather than recounted, scenes. You did go back in time, each time, with Kate, and the storytelling was vivid. But each flashback was several scenes too long. I mean, you know she gets married, so you don't need to see the *whole* wedding. The important part happens in the interaction between Kate and Jeremy while flying out to the wedding. Cut there. We don't need the dress and the friends and the toast and all that. After graduation, we need her and her sister lying under the Arch in St. Louis dreaming of the future. We don't then need them driving back around the city to kill the rest of the night. CS seems to feel she has to connect every single dot... At least a hundred pages could go under the delete button that way.

It is interesting that the main character is the one who, while judging her sister for her impulsivity, only rarely recognizes her own. She keeps herself in check most of the time, but when she moves, she is the one who behaves most destructively, including toward herself, when she decides to throw over her master's in social work (snore--and we never know why she picked that, anyway) to go help her father, or whatever it was she thought she was needed for. The sister pretty much does what she does in an even, predictable way. Showing up at Kate's college dorm was probably just a matter of missing her sister.

One question you can't keep from asking: if Jeremy, the husband, is so improbably great, what's he doing with Kate? She herself wonders at one point, bringing up the study in which men were found to prefer women who were not as smart as they were. Kate's clearly bright, but as she notes, she's no PhD. That's not the issue so much, as that she doesn't seem to read much (one novel all summer, and we don't know what it is), doesn't engage in any political discussion, even with her best friend, who went to Harvard and is probably wondering what the hell these people in the Midwest talk about, doesn't react to the news, doesn't seem to feel passionately about anything but her children, and even then doesn't seem to be thinking much about psychology or developmental theory. Basically, she's quite shallow, and it's not, in the case of this CS novel, society's fault. We just spent 358 pages inside the head of someone who really wasn't worth our time. Meanwhile, her husband is a scientist who has studied at Wesleyan and Cornell and Berkeley. Seriously. What's he doing with Kate? This makes me like him less--he DOES want a woman who isn't so smart, someone over whose neuroses he can patronizingly roll his eyes. (And I assume this is part of why she does what she does in the lead up to the denouement, though Kate, who is studiedly not living the self-examined life, is not going to see that.)

BTW, Jeremy seems quite attuned to Kate, probably because she's pretty transparent. Or maybe because he's sensitive. Which raises questions about "senses" and who has them. Also, while Gabe, at the end, seems clearly to have them, Rosie several times to me seemed possibly to have them, but Kate didn't want to see that. So again, what's sensitivity/perceptiveness, and what's senses, and what's fear. Also, what obligates you? Does seeing a picture of your future husband, or, in the case of her father, your future children, mean you HAVE to marry him, or HAVE to marry the woman who will bear your children? Or does it just suggest a possibility? Lots of cool questions could have been examined in this book, but weren't.

In the end, because of the avoidance of the real issues and of outright conflict, I'd say this was chick lit. The first clue I didn't get what I bargained for came at the end of chapter one, when she said something about her "powers." I thought, Did I really just read that? Is this going to be one of those book club books that tries to squeeze in a bit of paranormal and a bit of literary? Answer: yes. Not what you'd expect of CS, and too bad. I mean, I knew ESP was part of the book, and that was fine, but I thought it would be handled more subtly. If it were someone like me, who's read a lot about various things, including ESP, and who reads and writes literary fiction, or if I were that character, I would probably have said something like "when my sister made her prediction, I waited for a quiet moment in my day. Then I sat with my eyes closed, scanning. It was one thing when we were kids; back then, it had all seemed a game. But adulthood teaches you that the difference between intuition, even prescience, and mere fear, is hard to know. Years before I had put all the images, all the urgent thoughts that came welling through my throat to flash behind my eyes, I had put them all in the same place. The canister of banished fears. I thought my sister irresponsible for doing otherwise. But what if I were the coward? Should I sit here, starting now, and sort through them?" I dunno. I'd have been more interested in reading a book about a woman who has legitimate insight and also neurotic panic and can't tell the difference. What an echo chamber that would be. Instead we're dealing with a woman who feels that because she sometimes sees things in advance, she should see EVERYTHING in advance, and also she's responsible for all of it. Oddly the normal guilt she feels for the stuff she actually does cause seems muted compared to the raging guilt she feels for what she cannot control.

Some people wrote that they wished she would suffer the consequences of her actions. I don't know what those consequences would be that wouldn't be worse for everyone around her. Really, she IS kind of a witch. What I wish is that she would learn to live a bit. But now she'll be so wrapped up in fear of Gabe's exposure that this will be the new source of anxious heart, and she'll stumble around in that myopic tunnel instead. Is what I think.

For CS, I hope for something bigger. Maybe Hilary Clinton? Or just someone in a role where they CAN say what they want, which is what CS herself can do. What will such a woman say? What will she do?

It was interesting to read this side by side with The Woman Upstairs. I think I would recommend the Messud to others, but not this one. However, I would read the next book from Sittenfeld.

Oh, and one more thing, since a friend of mine did her PhD on psychics, how they know they are, how they validate, how they train/hone...psychic culture, basically... it just seems like there was a lot more to be explored in terms of the self-doubt and process of legitimation that people who believe they have psychic gifts go through. Kate never seemed to doubt it.

Because I often read on a Kobo, I'm trying to make a habit of commenting on the formatting of the EPUB file. This has nothing to do with the quality of the book itself or the writer's effort. But from a consumer's perspective, it's worth knowing whether you're paying for a book that feels like a piece of junk in terms of a reading experience. Good job on this one. There are clear differences among the software that publishers use and whether they bother checking over things like typos and hyphenation. In this case the file presented just like a regular book.

[Knewmyer · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book pissed me off. I enjoyed it in a three star kind of way until about 2/3 of the way through. Until the book's "earthquake" that is and then all of the sudden I'm reading some cheesy Jodi Picoult book. Really? Vi virtually disappears from the story at this point.

It made absolutely no sense that someone of Jeremy's caliber would find himself with someone as dull, unimaginative, incurious, and unambitious as Kate/Daisy. At least Sittenfeld could have made her lively or interesting outside of her ESP. She wasn't even a particularly good mother. Would it have killed her to teach Rosie some damn manners and to not refer to herself CONSTANTLY in the third person? She goes to a class with her baby and forgets to bring diapers?

Also lots of words and paragraphs describing how rilly rilly hard it is to be a stay at home mother. I have no patience for that kind of shit.

The dilemmas surrounding interracial marriages, gays and abortion seemed outdated. Maybe this book should have been set in the '50s or '60s (although I did enjoy the cultural references to the 1980s).

Ugh. It was a total disappointment.

[Caroline · Rating 3 out of 5]

***NO SPOILERS***

Sisterland explores the relationship of identical twin sisters who have an unusual ability: extrasensory perception. Violet (called “Vi”) and Daisy (who as an adult chooses to go by “Kate”) look the same but couldn’t be more different inside, and these differences extend to their feelings about their ability. This is no saccharine twins-as-best-friends story, although plenty of love exists between Vi and Kate. Sisterland homes in on the ways their relationship is complicated, sometimes fraught.

That these twins have different beliefs and views of the world comes through strongly, and illustration of their differences makes Sisterland shine. Curiously, Curtis Sittenfeld didn’t structure this in a dual perspective even though that seems the obvious choice for a story about night-and-day twins. Kate narrates, so she presents her relationship with Vi as it concerns (and inconveniences) her. Through Kate’s eyes readers see Vi as immature, free-spirited, and sometimes uncouth. Whereas Vi proudly embraces her psychic ability to the point of eccentricity, Kate is uncomfortably aware that to most people, being psychic marks someone as weird, and she can’t stand the thought of seeming weird. She’s successfully suppressed her ESP, but her identical twin, with her flaunting of the ability, foils Kate’s effort to present as normal. As their life paths go, Vi gives the middle finger to conventional expectations, a true opposite of the proper and serious Kate, who’s happy to be a stereotypical suburban mom, down to her vanilla (read nice and normal) white-woman name. Vi is the more entertaining of the two by a mile and steals every scene she’s in. Sisterland needed chapters from her perspective to counterbalance the book’s colorless suburban-mom tone and to provide a structured, undeniable message.

The book revolves loosely around a natural event: When an earthquake rocks their area, Vi senses another will soon follow, and her prediction quickly attracts rabid media attention across the nation. (Readers have to suspend disbelief more on this point than on the psychic ability, as in reality, if a woman in some Missouri town predicted an earthquake, she’d be written off as a nut, not be interviewed by Matt Lauer.) The earthquake prediction isn’t the star, though; everyday life is. To prevent the novel from getting silly, and to keep it solidly in the realistic-fiction genre, Sittenfeld made the ESP a matter-of-fact characteristic.

Sittenfeld is a detail-oriented observer of ordinary life and writes dialogue that not only sounds realistic but also follows a realistic pattern. Probing characters’ complex psychology is her speciality, and delving into the heart of matters is what makes her work better than many others in the genre. Like all Sittenfeld protagonists, Kate is a regular human being—in other words, flawed. She may have an ability commonly regarded as supernatural, but through many intimate and vulnerable situations, readers see that Kate’s life is as real as it gets: messy, stressful, and nuanced. Sisterland reminds readers that life is never black and white and that a person isn’t one self but many selves.

Vi and Kate are adults on most of these pages, but the story flashes back to offer revealing slice-of-life scenes with tightly coiled tension. Unfortunately, the scenes also introduce weighty sub-topics numerous enough to erase any through line. To varying degrees Sisterland looks at ESP, soulless suburban life, motherhood, the mother-daughter relationship, marital tension, depression, twinness, and racism. Although she included informative context, and some topics interact, Sittenfeld bounced from one to the other too quickly for a deep dive, and none—even the complicated sisterly relationship—dominates to reveal an overarching theme. A few just tease something crucial to come. A turn of events at the end screams soap opera, but it’s also something that happens in imperfect real life, so luckily it works.

Basically this book is a partial portrait of one mildly psychic woman’s life in a few different roles: mother, sister, wife, daughter, and friend. In reality a lot happens in these roles, and that holds true for the fictional events here—but the scenes, although riveting, have a disjointed episodic quality, and because Sisterland lacks a unifying connector, a lot does not happen. Everyday suburban life is shown in all its mundanity, generously sprinkled with arbitrary and superfluous details. It’s hard to determine what, ultimately, Sittenfeld meant to say with this work.

[Michelle♥ · Rating 1 out of 5]

Yuck.

This was horrible.

I love the idea of twins, I even want them someday, just ask my husband I talk about it all the time! And then the fact that this book had psychic twins?! Uh, duh yeah! I wanted to read it.

But this book...just YUCK! I had to finish it to know what happened, but seriously I just don't care.

This read more like a day to day life than I ever wanted to hear about. I read books to escape my day to day life, not read about someone else cleaning up baby poop or doing laundry. Yawn.

The fact that she cheated on her husband, got pregnant, knew it wasn't going to be her husband's baby and kept it just made me really hate Daisy/Kate. She was always trying to be something she wasn't and I hated that fakeness. But then this happened and it really cemented my hatred for her. I even hated Vi. I could not stand her; I thought she was really selfish, annoying, and just a spoiled brat who always mooched off her identical twin sister and never took anything seriously.

Bottom line: I hated this book. Wish I would've never picked it up. Glad I didn't waste a lot of time on it - lots of skimming.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

I went Back To The Future in this gem of a novel. Although it saddens me to think in fifty years teenagers probably won’t get many of the pop culture references, I’ve decided to live in the moment, or the recent past, as this novel clearly does. With The Simpsons, American Idol, Letterman, Saturday Night Live, The Tonight Show, Rihanna’s “Umbrella,” Rolling Stone, Christina Aguilera, The Fugitive, “The Way You Look Tonight,” Today, Animal House, Spin Doctors, Blues Brothers, Monty Python, Good Morning Vietnam, Mannequin, and The Exorcist, they somehow all managed to “Take My Breath Away.” But this novel has more staying power than Cool Ranch Doritos, Wonder Bread topped with butter and cinnamon sugar, and gonorrhea.

Kate and Vi Shramm both have extrasensory perceptions (ESP), along with being identical twin sisters, although each chooses a much different path. While Vi chooses to embrace her powers and attack the spotlight like she wants to ensure she receives every minute of her fifteen minutes of fame, Kate shies away from her powers like she might have caught an STD from some overzealous frat boy. Both seem sexually experienced in my limited knowledge of the world, but for entirely different reasons. Vi uses her assets, in this case ample breasts, as a weapon to manipulate unsuspecting male suitors, and in some cases, just for the hell of it, tossing around hand jobs and sexual favors like ice cream cones to six year-olds, while Kate takes a more reserved approach to sex, except when gentleness, kindness, or bouts of uncontrollable passion cause her to expose her naughty bits.

Kate was the more likeable character, except I did have a few moments of displeasure with her over the course of the novel. Vi, however, was self-absorbed, hypocritical, irrational, contradictory, only acted in her own best interests, constantly passed judgment, and sometimes experienced what might be considered sociopathic tendencies. So I didn’t mind poking around in Kate’s head for some 400 odd pages or so. Had Vi been the real star of the show, though, I might have had an entirely different opinion of SISTERLAND.

I received this book for free through NetGalley.

Cross-posted at Robert's Reads

[Elyse Walters · Rating 4 out of 5]

This wasn't *PREP*, elite High School Boarding School classic ....
or
*AMERICAN WIFE*, ....or perhaps Laura Bush and the portrait of an enduring marriage....
or
*ELIGIBLE*....the retelling of Pride and Prejudice

It's *SISTERLAND*.....a story about twin sisters, loyalty, betrayal, psychic abilities,
parenting, an earthquake ...with excellent dialogue. I listen to most of this novel -
audiobook ( a few times I read parts also)...

I enjoyed it ....I'm a big Curtis Sittenfeld fan. I actually enjoyed this story more than I thought, because when this novel first came out, many of my friends, told me to pass it up.....that it wasn't as good as Prep, or American Wife. I'm not so sure...I like it!

I really enjoyed the characters, the drama between the sisters, tension to the end....( I didn't know where was going)....and once again, my favorite audible narrator,
Rebecca Lowman

[Diane Wallace · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good story! entertaining,thought provoking and a bit predictable but satisfying outcome at the end (paperback!)

[Blair · Rating 3 out of 5]

Daisy and Violet Shramm grew up as troubled young girls, struggling with their unhappy parents and being bullied at school, with their unusual abilities - they're psychic, a hazy set of abilities vaguely defined as their 'senses' - compounding these problems. Now the twin sisters are in their mid-thirties, and Daisy, who narrates this story, is married with two young children, having changed her name to the less distinctive Kate. Meanwhile, Vi has embraced the things that make her different; she is an eccentric figure who works as a professional psychic, and is something of an embarrassment to her sister. The pivotal moment of the book comes when Vi predicts that a serious earthquake will take place in the twins' hometown of St. Louis. The story follows the days leading up to October 16th, the supposed date of the earthquake, with lengthy flashbacks to the twins' past.

Sisterland is more a domestic saga than anything else - not the kind of book I would normally read, and given that fact, I enjoyed it more than I expected. Once I'd settled into the story and got an idea of what it would be about, I found it very comfortable to read, somehow: I read it quite slowly compared to my usual pace, but I found it pleasantly relaxing, and could easily visualise the setting and characters.

Kate is a good character, I suppose, but I say that begrudgingly because I didn't particularly like her. In fact, I was actually quite offended by some of her opinions - this started at the very beginning, as the opening chapter has her expressing some pretty ignorant views about her sister's bisexuality, and continued throughout the book, as she has a judgemental and somewhat patronising attitude to women who haven't had children. (She seems to believe they must all be terribly miserable - she also appears to think the same thing is the root of the 'problem' for women who are either very skinny or overweight, or, worse, single.) It would be an exaggeration to say that I didn't care about Kate at all: she is a well-rounded, human character, and her numerous flaws are part of that, but I would probably have enjoyed the story more if I'd really liked her. Vi was also a very flawed character, but I much preferred her, although maybe that would have been different if I'd had to spend the whole narrative inside her head.

I also thought the characters' attitude towards race was somewhat puzzling. They're all well-educated people in their thirties, yet they seem to have this really old-fashioned hyper-awareness of race that I found surprising. By a certain point I started cringing at the constant mentions of the fact that Hank is black - I can see why the author might have wanted to push this point given the nature of the ending, but it felt very laboured. Am I just being naive here? Perhaps this type of attitude is typical in this part of the US and has been deliberately included by the author; perhaps she's written the characters like this precisely because you're supposed to recognise how wrong it is?

Finally, the ending was a strange one and I've seen from browsing other reviews that quite a few other readers have been dissatisfied with it. Personally I find it difficult to understand why Kate made the decision she did, but I'm not a mother, so I'm not going to go on about that too much. It did, however, defy belief that an intelligent couple like the Tuckers could POSSIBLY believe they could pass off a mixed race child with a black father as having darker skin because of 'Greek blood' in the family...! I mean, maybe there was a degree of self-deception involved here, but come on! Were they planning to continue with this version of events forever?!

Looking back over my review, it seems I have more negative things to say about this book than positive ones. I was genuinely impressed by it as a story, I just wasn't particularly keen on the people in it, and the narrative as a whole seemed to have a lot of small faults that my mind couldn't help but pick at. Sittenfeld is a great writer, and seems to have a talent for creating very believable, if not entirely pleasant, characters, but I didn't enjoy Sisterland as much as I did Prep. I'd only really recommend it if this kind of thing - the meandering family drama - is typically interesting to you.

[Susan · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wonder if the authors read these reviews. (I would.) Let me say up front that I liked "American Wife," but my opinion may be heavily salted by my hatred of the Bush family and everything they stand for. I did not like "Sisterland" for the following reasons:
(1) I bought the idea of the bond which can be called psychic between the identical twin sisters. I have twin sons who, although they are not identical, share a bond which is different from the bond each shares with me and with their singleton brother. I did not for a second buy the idea that the psychic bond between the sisters translated into ESP or premonitions or whatever you want to call it in the external world, but I went along with it because why not and also because it's kind of the basis of the plot. Having rolled up my sleeves and done that, I got madder and madder at the author for not DOING anything with it. The twin named Violet tries to monetize it and is depicted as silly and selfish. The twin named Daisy -- yes, their names are Violet and Daisy, and Daisy's daughter's name is Rose, OMG -- tries to rid herself of her ESP powers by means of a ridiculous paper-burning ceremony in her backyard, which enterprise struck me as about as likely of success as trying to change your eye color, and we readers are confirmed in the sneaking suspicion that we've had since page 1: Daisy is freaking boring. She's a bundle of insecurity in need of constant reassurance. OMG, get over yourself!
(2) Readers knew from the instant that Hank appeared in the story that Daisy was going to have sex with him. After it happened, we knew that she would get pregnant. We understood this at the same moment that we understood that the freaking earthquake was going to be a freaking metaphor -- that is to say, a long time before it actually happened. By the time it did happen it would have been a letdown -- if there had still been any suspense, which there wasn't.
(3) How shall I put this? The sex is a bit unrealistic? Daisy comes every single time? No, she doesn't. (I know it's hard to write a good sex scene, but these were so boring that I actually skipped one.)
(4) Jeremy, the husband of Daisy, doesn't exist. Never has. Never will. Get the goddam abortion and keep your big mouth shut forever, Daisy. That would have been the grownup thing to do. No, the grownup thing to do would have been not to cheat on your perfect husband but, as I say, this paragon of virtue doesn't exist because he has no humanness -- he's just a big ball of forgiveness walking around.

I'm sorry. I wanted to like this book. I laughed till I cried over the description of the games that the sisters played as children.

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well I think for a while I was punishing her for being Curtis Sittenfeld, of which I know a few things. One of the things I know about her is that she currently lives in St. Louis, and is married to a SLU professor, and recently wrote a purportedly positive article about St. Louis, but with which my hipster St. Louis friends strongly disagreed. Two is that she wrote Prep and American Wife, the fact of which is no state secret, but I dearly loved both of those books and thus held crazy high hopes for this one.

It was looking like a three for a while, for I do have some big problems with this book, many of which can be explained by my pre-conceived notions. First, I felt like she was over-saturating the reader with specific places, park names, street names, etc. Maybe I just noticed it because it was St. Louis and I have a familiarity with everything she threw out there, but sometimes I wondered if it wasn't excessive. I feel like most authors want to give you some details to establish time and place, but sometimes it felt like she JUST wanted to give you that, so a St. Louis reader would be like, YES, you've done your research. I just don't know if most novels are SO specific with store names, street names, park names, neighborhood names, interstate names, etc.

Second, this novel just didn't measure up to the hype organically generated by her name. Her last two novels were legitimately in my top 20 books of all time, at least? Certainly Prep was, and American Wife may have snuck in at number 19. Suffice to say, I thought she was one of my authors that would always and expectantly churn out a masterpiece. This was merely a very entertaining novel. I was going to give it a 3 star rating, but then I realized that was unfair to the author, because but for my lofty expectations, I would give this a 4 star.

I forgot about one more aspect of the novel that did not ring true to me/was unsatisfying. The protagonist. So...she's not that pretty, not intellectually curious in the slightest, not very loyal, yet...every man she's ever met or been with, besides one, wants to marry her? Every male who's ever around her can't wait to bed her? She never, ever, wants for male company? Why? Cuz she seemed pretty fucking boring to me. Maybe play up her looks, because beyond that, I'm not getting why an admittedly non-intellectually curious person who does nothing or feels nothing beyond being embarrassed by her weirdo sis and loving her kids real hard keeps attracting dude after dude who want nothing more than to be engaged to her and make her their wife...and don't get mad at anything, up to and including having her sister drain all the money from their savings account plus extra.

As a matter of fact, I'm going ahead and deleting an extra star right now, because I forgot how freaking unrealistic that seemed to me. So, bottom line...for a page turner, I give it a 4. For realism, I'm knocking it down to a 3, and it was so unrealistic that I think that usurps its readability.

[Barbara · Rating 2 out of 5]

It took me a bit of time to get into this book. I nearly abandoned it, but I did become involved after the first 5 chapters. It’s a story about identical twin sisters who have psychic abilities. What grabbed me at the beginning was my empathy for the sister who is telling the story, Kate. She is the wanting to please sister; the sister who wants to do well and be liked. Her twin, Vi (Violet) is a hell-raiser, promiscuous, unlikeable character. I felt empathy for Kate; I would be horrified to have a sister like Violet. The basic storyline is that Vi gets a psychic sense that there will be a horrendous earthquake in St. Louis (where they both reside) and calls into the local news station to tell them her prediction thereby making Vi a local and national celebrity. The story goes back and forth between the twin’s history together and the current time. The book was interesting in exploring psychic abilities versus actuality. Confirmation Bias was examined (attributing greater meaning to so called evidence that supports existing believes while ignoring information that contradicts it); and reality: what is reality? Vi said “we create our own reality but the truth,ultimately is what we chose to believe.” There are struggles in Kate’s marriage; Kate ruminates over her decision to have children versus working. Kate reflects over her parent’s marriage and each parent individually. It’s a chic-lit book. There are a couple of surprises, but in general, it’s an average book.

[Brandice · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sisterland was good, but also my least favorite of Sittenfeld’s books. I’ve been a long time fan of her stories, devouring Prep, American Wife, Man of My Dreams, and most recently, earlier this year, Eligible. She writes enjoyable fiction.

Sisterland is a story about two twin sisters, Vi and Daisy (Kate), who are very different but still stay connected. They fight and makeup regularly. Vi is a psychic, and her lifestyle embarrasses Daisy, who is a suburban St. Louis mom, desperate for normalcy. Growing up, both twins had “senses.” As she grew older, Daisy tried to shove them away, whereas Vi embraced them. Even when they’re frustrated with each other, the sisters come back to one another, and are there for each other. The story is told in first person narrative by Daisy, and focuses on their current daily lives, although there is a significant amount of stories throughout the book dedicated to flashbacks of their life growing up.

Vi publicly predicts an earthquake will impact St. Louis, and the story in Sisterland ultimately centers around the buildup, and then day of this anticipated event. Who will be affected, when, etc.? I was into the story, however, I felt like the buildup to get there took awhile, and the ending of the book felt a bit too “neat” considering everything going on with Daisy. Liked it, but didn’t love it. Of course I will continue reading Sittenfeld’s books!

[Polly Ascher · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had high hopes for this book. Earthquakes? I'm totally fascinated by them. The paranormal? I read a ton about it. St Louis? I consider it my co-hometown. I was hooked the first part of the novel.

Identical twins Daisy (known later as Kate) and Violet (Vi) have psychic abilities which Daisy try's desperately to suppress and Vi embraces. Vi makes a prediction about a major earthquake hitting St Louis on a specific date, and the story unfolds.

I thought Curtis Sittenfeld did a great job at the beginning - twins growing up in a dysfunctional, unhappy home, having this psychic ability that both girls used at a young age for different reasons; Daisy (as she was known then) to get in with the popular crowd, and Vi, because she could. Sittenfeld really captured teenage angst and the sometimes beautiful, sometimes sad relationship between the twins, who are very different.

As the girls get older, the story falls apart. Daisy changes her name to Kate and engages in a series of long-term relationships with men, never feeling truly happy and does everything she can to create as "normal" as a life as she can, while Vi embraces her gift and lives as a free spirit, sometimes to the chagrin of her sister.

In my opinion, Sittenfeld could not figure out what she wanted this book to be about. Sister bonds? The challenges of being a new mom? Trying to live a happy life while conquering the demons of your past? How cool and hip St Louis is for being a sleepy Midwestern town? Too much going on here. And the end was just ridiculous. I ended up not liking Kate/Daisy at all and wondering how in the world she was able to constantly have boyfriends who wanted to marry her. She came across as so boring and shallow. And don't get me started on some of her really bad decisions toward the end of the book. Her husband is a saint for putting up with her.

There were so many personal coincidences in this book. Daisy's high school boyfriend goes to college at my alma mater (2300 students) and she pledges my sorority at Mizzou. Her knowledge of St Louis is impressive, (I found out later she lives there) but became a distraction to me because it was so "in your face". Lots of "we drove Hanley, to Clayton Road to DeMun" as in I get it, you know The Lou. Sooooo many references to local places (The Galleria, Blueberry Hill, Bread Co), which is always fun but again, seemed contrived because it was constant.

I really wanted to like this book, and enjoyed many parts of it. There were parts (especially the flashbacks of tween-teen years) I thought the writing was so poignant, but something happened midpoint that made the whole book fall apart.

[Julie Ehlers · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think Curtis Sittenfeld is kind of underrated, and I've been trying to figure out why that is, and I was going to use this review to speculate about the reasons people might feel disappointed by her books despite the fact that I, personally, always enjoy them. Then I was reminded of how much it sucks when people can't explain why they like a book without condescending to the people who don't like it. Simply put, if you have to resort to talking about how other people don't "get" a book instead of talking about the things that make the book great, the book probably isn't actually that great. So, instead, this review is going to focus on the good things about Sisterland, and Sittenfeld's writing in general. What a concept.

When I picked up Sittenfeld's first novel, Prep, I didn't really know what to expect, but the book had a pink-and-white cover, so I guess if I was expecting anything it was probably something fluffy. Instead, I found a book that was extremely entertaining, but not at the expense of good writing, character development, and emotional astuteness. I've mentioned a few times on here before that, at this point in my life, I don't want to have to choose between books that are fun to read and books that are smart and well-written. I want to read only books that are all of those things, and frankly there are enough of those out there by now that I think it's a reasonable desire. For me, Curtis Sittenfeld hits that sweet spot. I always enjoy the experience of reading her books, always get invested in the characters, am always amazed by the insights into people she has—I think she can put into words emotions that are sometimes hard to put into words—and I never cringe at her writing, which doesn't sound like much of a compliment, but because I'm a copy editor I probably cringe at people's writing choices more than most people do. Sittenfeld's a good writer, is what I probably should have just said there.

Regarding Sisterland specifically, it had all of the qualities I typically appreciate in Sittenfeld's fiction, but I also thought it was quite a bit livelier. I think the close relationship between the two very different sisters is what made the difference: The main character, Kate, was kind of a typical reserved Sittenfeld heroine, and having the wilder, more impulsive Violet to bounce off of her added a level of unpredictability to the proceedings that I really enjoyed. The psychic predictions were also intriguing in a way that made the book fun to read and kept me turning the pages. If I had one complaint about the book, it would be that at the end it focused more on Kate's relationship with her husband than on her relationship with her sister, but at the same time I do think Sittenfeld did a good job of setting the stage for the various plot points—nothing felt to me like it came out of nowhere.

If I had to think of one criticism of Sittenfeld's books in general, it would be that her language isn't particularly lovely. It's fine, of course, but you're never going to read a passage and marvel at how beautiful it is. I'm okay with that in this case, though—I think striving for prettier prose would just slow Sittenfeld down, and as far as I'm concerned she's got enough writerly gifts just as she is.

[Ellie Hamilton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read 2013

[Chaitra · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'll start with a disclaimer. I like Sittenfeld. I hadn't read any other novel by her except for Prep before reading this one, but the only reason I would bother picking up something dealing with the paranormal is because I like the author. It's not my type of story. But it did keep me reading, and for that I credit the way Sittenfeld writes.

But, it's really not all that good, plot-wise. The disharmony between two sisters, one who embraces her psychic senses, and the other who does not, is all very well. But it doesn't go anywhere beyond a point. Especially when it becomes clear that the sister who isn't dealing with her senses is hypocritical, judgmental, and an all-round unlikable character, and to make her even slightly sympathetic there's some desperate shoehorning of a crappy plot twist required. Unfortunately, it doesn't make her sympathetic, it just makes the book that much more unbelievable. And I don't even mind the plot twist. I can believe that Daisy/Kate would sleep with her next-door neighbor she's never before shown a sexual interest towards. I can believe that she would cheat on her husband whose halo can be seen pretty clearly, even while dealing with her crazy anxiety the origin of which I'm not exactly sure is explained in the book. His existence is unbelievable, but I can believe that she would cheat on him. But I don't like what happened after. What a crappy resolution - and so insulting too.

I hated the way Daisy/Kate doesn't want to come out and say she's pro-Life, that she's only choosing to keep the baby because she's afraid she would be deemed hypocritical otherwise. Never mind that the thought she had about not aborting an almost surely Down Syndrome affected baby was only in her head, and that she didn't make anyone privy to it. It came across as more affected than had she come out and said she's pro-Life and she didn't want to give up the baby. I hated the way that she put to her husband, I want to keep the baby, but if I had to choose between you and the baby, I'd keep you. Very generous of her, but it came after a certain amount of calculation - she knew he would not leave her, because he was a child of divorce. Not only that, she's also calculated what it is she must give up, and she doesn't think he would ask her to give up the baby. It must be nice to be so certain.

Throughout the book, I kept reading it in the hopes of a redemption for Daisy/Kate. Throughout the book, she's not a likable character. She's prejudiced, she gets away with bad behavior more often than not, she has an acute inferiority complex despite that, and I'd agree with her sister Vi that she's a bad mother too. Her children sadly are clingy wimps. She's no better - she lets every random person walk all over her, while castigating those nearest to her (Vi) for questioning her choices. But the whole earthquake scenario was a set-up for getting her shit back together, where she learned something, grew up, or so I thought. Imagine when at the end she cries a river for having to leave her beloved (not, if you've sat through 350 pages of her cribbing) St. Louis as a punishment for her indiscretion. She doesn't have to leave her husband, she doesn't have to give up her baby, she doesn't have to find a job to support three children, her father dies pretty much on time for her to move on without guilt or having to explain, she even gets to move to New York. And the dark complexioned (her neighbor is black) baby? Why, Greek blood of course. I can't even.

Yes, I know this is marketed as a story of two sisters, but really it's just one person commenting on the lack of the other. Vi is fun, cares two hoots for what others think about her, and is basically quite the opposite of smug, supercilious Daisy/Kate. All of her qualities are judged by Little Miss Perfect, and are noted as inferior, but generally harmless. She makes a prediction, is wrong but is happy, and not only does she make the first move, the reconciliation in their "troubled" relationship comes because she accepts Daisy/Kate's decisions in life without any judgment. It's all The Daisy/Kate Show really, and there's about as much growth in her as Peter Pan. I'd initially marked it a three starrer, but apparently the whole thing bothered me more than I thought I did. I'm bringing this down to two stars.

[Ellis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disclaimer: I received an ARC through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. While I love Sittenfeld's writing, none of this influenced my opinion in any way.

I like Curtis Sittenfeld. She doesn't feel the need to give in to peer pressure and make her characters likeable. She takes chances. She says things we might think or say to ourselves sometimes, but of which we know we should keep them for ourselves. She's funny in a subtle way.

The first and only one her novels I read before is Prep, which I bought three years ago. I'll be honest about this: my decision to buy it was mainly based on the cover. I found it during the summer between high school and uni and the covergirl exuded such hope in her facial expression that I felt an instant connection. I started it on the train home and was immediately sucked in by Sittenfeld's writing. Since then, every time I go into a bookstore, I take some extra time to see whether they have her other work.

When I still lived with my parents fulltime, every day at dinner me and my siblings had to say how school went. My sister made it short and snappy with a simple "Good." or a shrug. One of my brothers reacted the same way, though he often felt the need to be smart, and answered with "Bad." or "Boring." Le sigh. My other brother told a story every now and then, and then it was my turn. There was a reason I usually was the last to answer and that was that I used to have a superpower. I had the special ability to transfix people with the most tedious and asinine stories ever. Many a time I wondered why they even listened but somehow they were intrigued, they laughed, they wanted more! So I gave the people what they wanted. I was flattered.

Then I went off to uni and met a bunch of new people. Suddenly, my siblings weren't all that interested in my stories anymore. They didn't know the people I was talking about, they wouldn't have the same teachers anyway, the parties only sounded interesting if they'd been there themselves. Away the laughs went. Dinner became a quiet occasion. Sometimes they asked me if I had a story, but I just shook my head. It wasn't worth the brouhaha.

Still, I had stories to tell. I had opinions. I just needed a platform. Then - I discovered the infinite possibilities of the internet. I could write my feelings on a book and people would like them or respond to them. I met new people, made new friends and became more invested with the day. The book community was my new home and while at times it was exhausting and rage-inducing, I found a place to make my own. I was happy.

Okay, if you've made it this far into the review, props to you my dear. There is a reason I'm telling you this, since this info-hopping is exactly how Sisterland reads. Just like Kate needs to tell her story to make a point, my goal is to write a review, but we both feel the need to give copious amounts of backstory that might/might not be relevant. To us, of course, it is. We have lived it. Memories count for something. The past is the only proof we have of ourselves as individual beings. It is the little things, the specific instances that have made us who we are today. Every moment counts. We think that if this and that hadn't happened or it hadn't occurred so and so, it might have made a difference. We could have been completely different people. That is our philosophy. That is how we defend our choice to inundate you with details upon details of our daily lives.

Obviously, this is all very fascinating stuff when it concerns a person you care about. That's one part of the equation. Sittenfeld can write it so that I will keep reading. She touches upon important topics such as racism, homosexuality, abortion, disability, gender and class issues, life's little disappointments, etc. but she drowns them in the inner life of one of the least likeable persons imaginable. If you had problems with Lee Fiora, chances are you're not going to like Kate. On a certain level, I could relate to Lee because I know what it's like to be an angsty teenage mess. Maybe I could understand Kate better if I was a reluctant psychic, married with young children, and living in the suburbs. None of that is likely to happen though.

There is a story that needs to be told, namely that Violet - Kate's twin sister - has predicted an earthquake that will strike their neighbourhood in the near future. This sets a whole slew of events in motion and I liked how the different ways in which people react to an impending catastrophe were addressed. However, some reactions will be exactly why a lot of readers are not going to like this book. I'm not going to go into specifics here because much of it happens in the last 30%, so that definitely counts as spoiler. I didn't so much have a problem with what Kate did per se as with her reaction during and afterwards. She's pretty close-minded and judgemental, but the narrative acknowledges this. My rating probably would've been higher if Sisterland, or at least part of it, had been told in Violet's POV. She's awesome, but she's the kind of amazing that's probably only possible because she is so different from the MC and because she's not the narrator.

Where the novel really won points with me was its portrayal of the sister relationship. "Sisterland" is the name Violet gave the room they shared as kids, so in a way, everything that concerns the twins makes up the history of this "country" and thus the narrative of the story. Kate and Violet have an authentic sibling relationship. They don't always like each other, but they love each other. When they have a fight, they sometimes won't speak for days, while the next time they might burst out laughing in the middle of it. People often say that no one screws you up as much as your parents. While that certainly is true for Violet and Kate, the influence of siblings shouldn't be underestimated. It's a complex and difficult thing to understand and even worse to represent on the page, but this is where Sittenfeld's mastery truly shows. Their interactions made for the moments I could connect with the novel because it was so recognisable. Whatever differences they have, Violet and Kate are there for one another, to the point that it becomes unconditional.

There is one thing I need to address. As was the case with Prep, sex is a large component of this novel. It is not the over-the-top orgasms-and-fuzzy-feels-inducing stuff of romance novels. It concerns the reality of sex, with its ups and downs geddit? , which also means children/teenagers having sex. Violet starts when she's around thirteen/fourteen and Kate follows not long after. I mention this because there are people who are - understandably - icked out by such a thing. I'm largely okay with this, because it's realistic, but that doesn't mean it isn't problematic. Once again, the narrative recognises this and it draws a distinction between reflection of reality and the promotion of some messed-up ideal. I've been asking for this for so long that I felt I needed to call it out when I finally encountered it in my reading material.

Sisterland clocks in at 400+ pages. It could have done with less. As it is now, it meanders around the plot, jumps between memory and present day with no discernable reason or connection, and parts of it feel incredibly random. I don't mind this. Life happens. There often is no causality between the different things we go through. We want there to be, because causality indicates purpose. That's why it's such a key component of fiction. In literature, causality translates to relevancy. I know these things, which is why I always applaud authors who play with these conventions. However much I sympathise with the message, it doesn't make it any easier for me to read the work in question, though.

I had a hard time connecting with Kate and since characters remain the most aspect important of fiction for me, I found it hard to care. With that being said, in typical Sittenfeld fashion, there is no happy ending. At least, it didn't read as happy or satisfactory to me and I felt bad for Kate. She annoyed me to no end, but she certainly didn't deserve this. She deserved part of it, because she needs to own up to her mistakes, but I wanted better for her. I'm glad Sittenfeld can still inspire me to wish a better outcome for a character I didn't particularly care about, which is why I'll still check out the rest of her work.

[nastya · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is fascinating in that it has no real conflict, characters that have personality or plot. And it's somehow 400 pages long. I did enjoy parts of other two Sittenfeld's books, they were all smart easy fun, a book to devourer in a few hours, preferably between demanding reads. This was not enjoyable at all.

What this did have is a lot of minutiae about being a mom to the two kids under 3. A lot of car seats were installed, a lot of baby food was consumed. I skimmed all of it in search of a plot about adults but that never materialized. And this was supposed to be a book about identical twins with psychic abilities!

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

I honestly don't recall who recommended this book to me (sorry, if it was you!) but I'm glad they did. This is a paranormal tale of twin sisters who have psychic abilities (precognition, clairvoyance, a little bit of telepathy, etc.) one of whom (our narrator) has done her best to reject this part of her while her sister has gone the other way and make a career (of sorts) out of her abilities (I can't seem to stop putting things in parenthesis today).

One of the things I liked about the book was how matter-of-fact it was in dealing with the paranormal element. There was no attempt to build a 'spooky' tone; it was very much a case of these abilities being an accepted part of their lives. This is in no way a horror novel.

Things start to go awry when the sisters have a premonition of an earthquake in the near future (16th October to be precise) and the drama builds from there.

I really enjoyed this book, despite the fact that there isn't a single character in the book (with the exception of the small children) that I liked. Don't get me wrong; they are (for the most part) well drawn and three dimensional characters that live and breathe... I just wouldn't want to have to spend any time with them in real life (whatever that means).

I have a sense (whooo-o-oooh!) that I'll reading more of Sittenfeld's work in future.

(Brackets.)

[Meghan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wretched. So there's these identical twins, and one is responsible and good and always has a steady boyfriend: Daisy. One is wild and bad: Violet. So, Sweet Valley's Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield, but with some psychic abilities, living in St. Louis, with a distant father and deceased, depressed mother. The book is narrated by the good twin, who changes her name to Kate when she goes to college. But it's just too bad that the good twin is a despicable, wholly unsympathetic mess of a character, a mom in her mid-thirties not questioning her conservative, what-will-people-think reactions. It's as if Sittenfeld has tried to compose a 'normal' middle class white woman with two young children who readers will understand, but has accidentally created a woman who is just unsympathetic, because her primary motivation seems to be a drive not to be embarrassed.

1. One of the opening scenes has this charming line from Kate to Violet, "If you feel equally attracted to both men and women, why not date men? Isn't it just easier? I mean, I wish it weren't true, but-" On the next page, Kate later reveals that her actual thoughts are that Violet has gained weight and thus must think it's easier to be with women, because they're "more forgiving about appearances." Since this is within the first 10 pages of the book, it's unclear why Kate cares about this at all, other than she must be a judgmental, awful person.

2. Kate and her husband's close friends discover that the baby they're expecting has Down's syndrome. Like 92% of couples facing that diagnosis, they terminate the pregnancy. Kate finds this so devastating, that the woman would choose not to have this baby, that she has an affair with the husband of the couple.

3. I loved Prep. I loved its main character Lee, a teenager on scholarship at a fancy boarding school. I felt sympathy for Lee even as she made mistakes and did the wrong things and had bad self-esteem. It felt real, and also like she was developing and changing. This book is SO different in its narrative voice. I felt not just ambivalence towards the narrator's actions, but antipathy. The characters seem like real people, but I don't believe that the reader is supposed to feel this much disagreement with Kate's voice and actions.

4. I'll mention that the main plotline is that Violet makes a living as a psychic, and she predicts that a major earthquake is going to occur in St. Louis. Kate has tried to forget her psychic abilities, and so doesn't like that her twin is getting media attention for this prediction. Kate's husband is also some sort of earth scientist (?) at a college, and she worries that her twin's woo-woo New Age-iness will reflect badly on him and he will be judged by his colleagues.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

(3.5) To call this a novel about twins with ESP would be a drastic oversimplification – it’s about parenthood, family inheritance, beliefs that contradict rationality, race and suspicion in modern America, loyalty, betrayal, and, above all, sisterhood.

Where Sittenfeld excels is in voicing an absolutely believable female, first-person subjectivity, especially when recreating adolescence and high school experiences; she also knows well the ways of introverts.

It cannot be denied that the plot becomes rather melodramatic towards the end: “this was a situation from a soap opera,” Kate admits. Plus the reflections on race relations in America are fairly crude. Indeed, if this came from anyone other than Sittenfeld (whose style and voice I had already fallen in love with, through American Wife especially), I would probably have judged it more harshly.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed every moment spent in Kate and Violet’s company. I have always believed that Sittenfeld is good enough to be considered among the preeminent American novelists writing today, but she sells herself short by focusing on women’s concerns, thus earning the ‘chick lit’ label. When Prep came out, it was billed as Middlemarch crossed with Sweet Valley High, and Sittenfeld does indeed have the introspective depth of a George Eliot – she just needs a better vehicle for her talents next time.

[Dianne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really engrossing and well written story about twins Daisy (who later calls herself Kate) and Violet who have "senses" or psychic abilities. As the story begins, Violet predicts a strong earthquake is coming. The story weaves between the twins' past and present, fleshing out their complicated relationship, while building suspense - is a quake coming or not?

Sittenfeld is a master at character development and storytelling - highly recommend.

[Snotchocheez · Rating 2 out of 5]

1.5 stars

The first review of this I tried to post got waylaid whilst floating in the interwebs, which is probably just as well: it was filled with much more vitriol than I intended. I mentioned in it that despite its unnecessary heft, I enjoyed American Wife, Ms. Sittenfeld's fictional examination of First Lady Laura Bush's life. I like the exacting detail on display, and I really appreciate the effort to, I suppose, 'humanize' Alice Blackwell (er, Laura Bush) and make her a sympathetic character worth taking a look at.

I started off enjoying Sisterland, a story about identical twin sisters in St Louis with psychic abilities, but it seems, after about 40% in, that after digging deeper past the lives of sisters Daisy (or Kate, the first person narrator and mother of two kids) and Violet (or 'Vi, Kate's wayward twin), and looking past Vi's prediction of a major earthquake hitting St. Louis (um, wha?), there just isn't much of a story to be had here.

I often scoff when I hear an author (when interviewed) making comments like "it's like the book wrote itself!" Usually that just sounds disingenuous and fakely self-deprecatory to me, but I'd not be surprised at all if I heard Curtis say the same thing about this book, because the entire last half seems to be written on the fly. After exacting descriptions of St.Louis, Mizzou (U. of Missouri in Columbia MO, where Kate went to school), and the care and parenting of young children, there simply isn't any story here. The dynamic between the psychic twin sisters (which you'd think, given the novel's title, would be the foundation upon which this story is built) is almost completely ignored, as Curtis flails for a direction to take. She opts for social commentary (think Spike Lee's "Jungle Fever"...as reimagined by Jodi Picoult) and shoots for profound significance. It's as half-baked (and as anachronistic) as it sounds. She tries her darnest to salvage a directionless, mostly story-less first-half-of-a-novel with overly familiar, soap-operatic drama. And, sadly, bombs in the attempt.

This is not intended to be a slam on Curtis Sitttenfeld. I think she's a gifted writer. I just hope her next novel is much more thoroughly planned out to avoid her sounding like she's making it up as she goes along, and avert another literary. train wreck.

[Doreen · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I opened the package my editor sent me and saw that one of the books I had to review was the latest Curtis Sittenfeld, the first thought that came to mind was, "Ugh, read this one first and get it over with quickly." The only other book of hers I've read is the horrible Prep and her magazine interviews always read as much too self-satisfied to me, so when the time came, I girded my loins, cracked open the book and consciously determined to be fair. I was very pleased to discover as I read, though, that it wouldn't take effort, as Sisterland is a far superior novel to Prep, and goes a long way to raising Ms Sittenfeld in my esteem.

I'm not going to be able to escape comparing the two books, so let's do that first. It isn't that the narrator and erstwhile heroine of Sisterland, Kate Tucker, is any less unpleasant than Prep's Lee Fiora. Kate can be mean and uptight and self-centered, but she has, thankfully, self-awareness, and knows when she should atone, even if she doesn't. That goes a long way towards making her a fictional character you want to spend time with. And while I've had similar experiences as the subjects of both books, in Sisterland I felt actual sympathy for Kate and was rooting for her. Kate was flawed but believable, whereas Lee was just too awful and dreary to be true or entertaining. I felt, too, that this was a much more realistic portrayal of domesticity than Prep had been of boarding school.

Taken on its own merits, Sisterland is less about the paranormal than it is about belief in the paranormal and how that affects the daily lives of real people. More precisely, though, it's about the bonds we have with our parents and siblings and children and spouses, incorporating the topics of the day (including race relations and stay-at-home parenting) into the material. When it comes to family bonds, Ms Sittenfeld does a terrific job of portraying the complexities. I quoted some of my favorite lines here as I progressed through the book (visible below, I believe,) and want to include another excellent passage:

But wasn't I filled with sorrow less for the quiet futility of my father's life than out of fear that my own children would judge me as harshly as I judged my parents? Was I enough different from my mother and father? I tried to be, but hadn't I just messed up in other ways?

I hope Sisterland gets the acclaim Prep received but did not, in my opinion, merit. Great stuff, and it's made me no longer shudder at the prospect of having to read another book by Curtis Sittenfeld.

I received this book gratis as part of ELLE Magazine's ELLE's Lettres Jurors' Prize program.

[Chris Go · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think anyone who has had a family member who makes him or her cringe, and that he or she has tried to keep a secret, will enjoy this book. If that family member is your sister, I think Sisterland will draw you in all the more. If you are fascinated by twins, you may also enjoy it. Heck, if you can read, you may just want to crack it open.

The sisters in Sisterland are identical twins, Vi (short for Violet) and Kate. They are in their 30's. Their mother has been dead for a decade, and their father lives in a modest apartment in the same town. Vi is described as a single, bi-celibate, overweight psychic with a driving phobia, while Kate is a stay-at-home mother of two, trying to meld in the St. Louis suburbs. Both have psychic ability, but while Vi tries to make a living at it, Kate does her best to ignore it. What could possibly go wrong?

It started with an earthquake. Really, it does. [Sorry for the ear worm.] After a small earthquake hits the St. Louis area, the sisters' relationship is put to the test after Vi appears on the Today Show and makes a prediction. What will happen next is anyone's guess, and I literally stayed up all night trying to find out (unsuccessfully, I might add, falling asleep at page 280).

The novel leads us back and forth between how we got here, and where things are headed. The writing is so wonderful that you can start to hear the voices of the characters in your head - they become that real.

Lest you may think this is the story of the good sister versus the bad sister, it is far more complicated than that. I guess the moral might be, we all make mistakes. I was a little put off by one of the choices one of the characters makes, and so might remove a quarter of a star, if I could. Although, I also know this is really more my wanting to see the good sister win (although you could argue that as things are left, she does).

Sisterland would make an excellent selection for a book club. I can only imagine the stories that would be shared about crazy sisters (and other endearing relatives), especially after a few glasses of wine.

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oooooof. I feel as though I was just punched in the stomach. What a great, great story.

Curtis Sittenfeld is one of my favorite writers; she gets to the heart of the most human, ordinary moments, and connects me as the reader in a way that makes me say "YES. THAT." all the time. "Sisterland" is a tale of identical twin sisters, Violet and Daisy Shramm, who came of age in 80s St. Louis. They have a shared sense of ESP beyond stereotypical twinness, or, as they call it "having senses." In adulthood, Violet embraces her gift while Daisy tries to squelch and hide it.

The crux of the story is set around Violet making a prediction of a massive earthquake in the greater St. Louis area. I won't spoil the novel's climax, but the truth I ultimately took away from "Sisterland" is that the for most of us, when we look in the rearview mirror at what turned out to be the earth-shattering shifts of our lives, we see that they tended to stem from our most mundane moments and choices, our prejudices and vulnerability, more so than anything that would have been so major as to register on the Richter scale.

Yes. That. Exactly that.

[Tracey Graves · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely fantastic. I have actually read it twice. As a twin, there were so many things I could relate to.

[ReadAlongWithSue ★⋆. ࿐࿔catching up · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yep
A fair crafted read that did hold my attention although it veered on the paranormal realm to fantasy for me.

The concept of “special powers” is some things that lots of people believe but I just am not sure, call me Mrs Cynical.

A 3.5* for holding my attention.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book started out as a solid 4 star, and had 5 star potential but by the end, it was a 3 star. Some books are about characters and don't focus much on plot, others have a great mix of both, and some are just action driven where you really don't know the characters. This one was strictly character driven, with little to no plot movement. The premise is that two sisters are psychic and one of them has repressed her psychic abilities, but the other still uses them. The other, Vi, predicts a terrible earthquake, causing the country to question her prediction as being legit or not. The main character, Kate (or Daisy), is a housewife with two young children, and a close friendship with another househusband. The story alternates between the past and the present, filling in the backhistory to these characters. And while I did like the main character, as well as her sister, I felt they fell just a touch flat. By the end, I wished something big happened, and while I dont' want to spoil the plot, it fell kind of how I thought it would.