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A review by toniclark
The Sister by Poppy Adams
4.0
I'm close to giving this five stars. It's really awfully good and I love the ambiguities in the plot. I know that many people wanted to have more of the story spelled out at the end. In fact, Michiko Kakutani, in the New York Times, said, ". . . We never learn just what parts of Ginny’s reminiscences are lies and what parts are grounded in the truth." Kakutani concludes, "the jigsaw puzzle that Ms. Adams has so painstakingly fashioned turns out to be missing several crucial pieces by the time we’ve gone to all the work of putting it together."
Okay, I know Kakutani's a sophisticated reader, but these comments strike me as too much like those of someone who expects a story with all the missing pieces coming to light in the last few pages and neatly tied up with a bow at the end. In contrast, I liked the ambiguities, liked being given the opportunity to put the pieces together for myself, in the best way that I could. I felt so much more actively engaged in the story than I usually do. (Disclaimer: I haven't read many mysteries.) There are some things that the reader will never know, just as there are some things that none of the characters can ever know. And that just might include the main character, Ginny, a master of self-deception and ill-equipped to understand social cues and normal human relationships.
I found myself talking about this book at length to friends, explaining why I liked it so much. I thought there was a bit too much detail of the moth research, but it added a lot of texture to the novel as a whole and served to tell us a lot about Ginny.
Okay, I know Kakutani's a sophisticated reader, but these comments strike me as too much like those of someone who expects a story with all the missing pieces coming to light in the last few pages and neatly tied up with a bow at the end. In contrast, I liked the ambiguities, liked being given the opportunity to put the pieces together for myself, in the best way that I could. I felt so much more actively engaged in the story than I usually do. (Disclaimer: I haven't read many mysteries.) There are some things that the reader will never know, just as there are some things that none of the characters can ever know. And that just might include the main character, Ginny, a master of self-deception and ill-equipped to understand social cues and normal human relationships.
I found myself talking about this book at length to friends, explaining why I liked it so much. I thought there was a bit too much detail of the moth research, but it added a lot of texture to the novel as a whole and served to tell us a lot about Ginny.