The Sister By Poppy Adams

The

Do you ever start a book assuming that the title will be largely metaphorical... but then it turns out that the book is indeed in large part about The Behaviour of Moths.... But actually, if you overlook all the moth stuff (or I don’t know, I don’t know you and your lives, you might love moths in which case knock yourself out on the moth stuff) there’s a bloody good story here!
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I’d say it took me a good 70 pages to get to grips with this book (which is a good example of why I rarely DNF books, you never know when it might get good), but then I was enthralled by Ginny’s unique narrative voice and couldn’t wait to find out all of the Stone family’s deepest, darkest secrets. I wasn’t quite expecting this book to get as dark as it did, but I was here for it, just as I am always here for a good unreliable narrator.
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It reminded me of a blend of An Elderly Woman is Up To No Good, Eleanor Oliphant and Convenience Store Woman, except with a healthy dosing of moths added... how great am I making this sound? Like Eleanor and Keiko, Ginny sees the world differently and suffers greatly from traumatic events in her childhood and later womanhood. She was born without knowing all the rules of the world that everyone else seemingly knows innately. By the end of the novel I was quite sad to leave her behind, I’d begun to strangely root for her and I thought the ending was very fitting!
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I’m a bit surprised at the low rating on Goodreads, but I guess a lot of people just can’t handle the mothiness - and I guess a few things are left a bit open-ended but I’ve never been one for stories tied up neatly with a bow.
The Sister Two sisters see meet again after years of estrangement. The air is heavy with resentment and grudges. We learn the story from Ginny the narrator. We hope to get the unbiased account of events because Ginny is supposed to be the reasonable and sensible one, the scientist. Sometimes later we, of course, realise she is a completely unreliable narrator, but as is often in such cases, we can't help but see logic in her reasoning (that bit always worries me, just how far am I from becoming mad myself?).

Other reviewers complained they got too many moths and not enough answers. I didn't mind so much. I used to be very much into animals (and that included insect and their Latin names), so it was like reading one of those books I used to read when I was a kid. As for answers, Ginny couldn't give us any answers because she wasn't looking for them. She didn't know there were any questions, as far as she was concerned, things were the way she believed they were.

It brings us to the bigger question of what The Truth really is and why the hell we would need it anyway.

It was a very disturbing story but beautiful nonetheless. Read it.

Note: This was published in the US under a very uninspired title: The Sister The Sister The thesis of this book is marginally interesting. The protagonist, now in her 60s, is a recluse with significant mental problems who has lived alone in the crumbling family mansion for several decades. Her sister, whom she has not seen for thirty years, has decided to move home for her retirement. The action takes place over a long weekend, but there are extensive flashbacks to fill in the background.

The family are leipdopterists, and the book is filled with far too much moth lore for my taste. The characters seem to me flat and not particularly interesting. And finally, the author has, as she discussed in a conversation I participated in, deliberately left many important elements of the story unresolved; the reader is free to decide what the truth about events is.

If I had not been reading the book for participation in a discussion with the author, I would have quit the book after the first fifty pages or so. As it is, I finished it, but I don't feel that my reading time was well used. The Sister A fascinating debut novel from an author with enormous promise, The Behaviour Of Moths is the neo-gothic story of a dysfunctional family told from the viewpoint of the obsessional, deluded and probably autistic elder daughter, Virginia. Set in a huge, crumbling mansion in Dorset, the narrative focuses on the return of Virginia's younger sister, Vivien and its effect on Virginia's hermetically-sealed senility.

Virginia's youth was spent working alongside her lepidopterist father, Clive and the text seethes with the minutiae of their research, the alien details of the insect world with its cast of parasites and cannibals providing a ghastly commentary on the behaviour of Virginia and her family.

What I particularly liked about the narrative was the difference between Virginia's version of the tangled events that lead to two deaths and the version that the reader is gradually allowed to unravel. Not all of the questions are answered and we are left with a degree of uncertainty but that is part of the pleasure of the book. Like Clive, we observe the behaviour of the specimens and we draw our own conclusions.

The Sister I enjoyed the book, but it was ultimately disappointing. There seemed to be all kinds of currents and undercurrents and I kept waiting for the big revelations--did Virginia push Vivian off the bell tower? Was Virginia really a great lepidopterist, or was it all in her head? But nothing was ever actually revealed the ending let me down. Either an editor edited this to the bone or the author was trying for a book discussion book. I blipped past a lot of the stuff about moths--I know it was necessary to the story, but it got dull. The Sister

This book was loaned to me by a friend of mine who described it as the strangest book she had ever read. My bar for strange has been raised pretty high, so this book had a lot to live up to. Initially, I was surprised to find myself utterly engrossed by something that is the complete opposite of virtually everything in my library. This curious tale of two elderly sisters in an old Victorian house with nothing in common but a forty-year rift and their family's interest in moths was a much more alien landscape to me than the mountains of Barsoom, and I couldn't put the book down. However, I realized about halfway through the book that I was still waiting for something to really happen. The strange thing is that when something /did/ happen in the book, I wasn't moved very much. The ending wasn't funny enough to be a black comedy, and it wasn't sad enough to be tragic. The interludes where Ginny is drifting off, pondering insects and fireplaces and things are supposed to indicate that her mind is fracturing, but to me, it just seemed as though she had Asperger's. At the end of the book, all I could really do was shrug, and that is probably the most damning criticism I can give to a book. A book, (or any piece of art), whether good or bad, should move you. This book failed to move me, which is a shame, because the author shows some potential. She will probably write more books, but I don't know that I will ever read them. The Sister I wasn't sure what to make of this book and it didn't seem to know what to make of itself because the author deliberately leaves most of the loose ends loose. It has many elements which should add up to something; an unreliable narrator, a crumbling isolated mansion in the English countryside, a dysfunctional family, two ageing sisters, a forty year old rift, a touch of madness, surrogacy, lethal lepidopterists, lots of elements that would make a reasonable gothic tale. Somehow the elements do not quite come together.
It is the story of two sisters; Virginia lives alone in the crumbling family mansion and has not seen her sister Vivien for about forty years. Suddenly Vivien announces she is returning to retire. It is set over a single weekend and mostly in flashback form. How much of the story we are told is true is not possible to establish as it becomes clear that Vivien is not an entirely reliable narrator.
There is an awful lot about moths in this book; I wasn't aware that the study of lepidoptera means spending large amounts of time catching and slaughtering the poor little things. I really did not want to know how to remove the innards of a caterpillar so the skin is intact. Did you know that when the caterpillar pupates the contents turn into a liquid called pupal soup? Neither did I.
It reads easily and draws you in, but is ultimately unsatisfactory. And just to be picky, representatives of social services, even volunteers, don't cold call on a Sunday. The Sister so while the sister is powered by the same sort of confidently rendered literary suspense that propelled donna tartts the secret history onto bestseller lists (nyt) is not quite the same thing as books claiming to be just like secret history, it stays on the shelf. because no one can stop me. and the author photo shows the same kind of serious angular beauty as donna tartt, so- similarity. this book is full of things i like - the big crumbling mansion of the traditional gothic, the unreliable narrator of patrick mcgrath, the family secrets of kate atkinson, and now all im doing is name-dropping. i thought it was good. there are a few flaws that are just simply flaws a lot of first novels suffer from - the tendency to overdescribe certain things the reader is not interested in at the expense of some really interesting bits that remain a mystery. of course, a lot of this could be deliberate because of this particular narrators emotional shortcomings. i thought it did a good job of entering the head of this narrator (as i tiptoe around trying to avoid spoilers) and you will certainly learn a lot about moths. seriously - you might become an expert. but at the end, there are still some seriously unturned stones. which the more i think about it, might not be a criticism at all.
by the way - i swear this is my last donna tartt-esque book for a long time - i just wanted to get through the lot of them and be done with it, finally. they had been piling up. i also need to get a move on my byronathan... The Sister Vivien returns to the family home where her sister, Ginny dwells, which leads to the uncovering of secrets that may destroy their family. At times this comes across as an all out horror tale - a darkly comedic tale of a dysfunctional family of moth specialists living in a mansion in a small village... yep. you read that tight! :D This is quite a good read. 7 out of 12, Three Stars.

2009 read The Sister This novel is a fascinating exploration of the ways in which the mind can work, distort, and deteriorate. At the outset, this seems to be a fairly simple story of estranged sisters reuniting in their old age. While I could tell from reading the jacket that the real story would probably come in the possible scandal or heartbreak of their estrangement, I wasn't expecting the instability of the narrator.

It's the little things that tip you off gradually to what is happening here. Once you realize that Adams is using the classic technique of the unreliable narrator, it's impossible not to look beneath the surface of everything that she sees and remembers for the truth. It's also amazing how easily you can understand or sympathize with Ginny's logic, as twisted as it is - almost frightening once you realize how easily a mind can warp the truth.

The novel is a little slow to start out, but the story really picks up fairly soon. The descriptions of the moths and the processes that come with studying them may seem a little tedious, but I think they are necessary to completely immerse the reader in Ginny's mind - especially at the end of the novel. Adams includes little details in all the right places.

This is definitely a novel worth reading. Adams does a fantastic job of mapping the way Ginny's mind works, and also of manipulating the story. It's fascinating to see things from Ginny's point of view, all the while trying to figure out what's truly happening outside of her comfort zone and under the surface. This really is an impressive first novel - Adams certainly did her research, and knows what she's doing when it comes to her narrative.

*Review of ARC The Sister

This is the ARC edition, not the published paperback edition. The Sister

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