Elv steals her divorced father’s flashy convertible and convinces her two younger sisters to thrill ride with her. They fail to make a turn and the car flips over. Elv is injured but leaves the accident scene. Her youngest sister finds the middle kin dead and lies beside her until rescued by police and emergency personnel. After the accident, she refuses to speak.
On and on, the morbid tale continues. Like a whirlpool, it descends deeper and deeper into a world of hopelessness and despair. The Story sisters’ mother finds she has terminal cancer. After chemo and radiation treatments are deemed ineffective, she knows she is dying. In spite of her efforts to restore some loving relationship with her daughter, Elv, she is literally turned away at the door of eldest daughter, who is intoxicated with drugs.
All in all, I was fascinated by The Story Sisters for the wrong reason: I kept hoping for just a glimmer of true affection and happiness amidst the betrayals and psychological disintegration of the Story family. I must admit that in the last segment of the tale, the youngest Story sister falls in love with a man who appears normal in every way.
But what seems to be a ray of hope for this youngest sister, in my mind, does not offset the gruesome tone of the rest of the book. In particular I wonder what will happen to Elv, who now has a child. I would not recommend this book as a satisfying read in spite of the success of other books Alice Hoffman has penned. For me, it is just too dark to be enjoyable.
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