Johnson explores the ambivalence in sibling relationships in this short novel about a mother who escapes with her two teenage daughters to a beach house after an unspecified horrific event at their school has made their lives in the old location impossible. The beach house, which is old and has been in her deceased husband's family for decades, has a forbidding presence, and while Sheela, a children's book author, isolates in her room upstairs, her daughters are left to their own devices. The pattern of their relationship quickly becomes evident: While the mother is mostly absent, a dynamic that we suspect is always at play, and not just during this unusual period, means that September reigns over the younger July, teasing, tempting, pushing her towards danger. The mystery of the event at school that up-ended their lives persists, growing more ominous as it becomes clear that September was seeking revenge for a trick some girls at school played on July.
Normal teenage preoccupations—alcohol, first sex, binging on TV—are minimized by the always looming threat of September's changing moods. She is like the tiger that roams the house in Julio Cortázar's brilliant short story, "Bestiary," (from the collection, Blow-Up and Other Stories), as the house's human occupants dodge the animal's moves. Even though September can also be loving and generous, more often she orchestrates their games towards danger. July's first person narration is filled with kinetic awareness, based in feeling and observing as she hides from, and alternatively searches for, her sister. Their version of Simon Says is "September Says." "'September says eat all the mayonnaise,' and I groan but get the jar from the fridge and sit on the sofa with a spoon." July never says no. She eats the entire jar because it is easier to submit than to cross her sister, but more concerning, she has accepted her role as her sister's minion and in the process, has lost her voice. She narrates a large portion of the novel, telling the story from the perspective of a person who is subsumed. Chapters from the third person point of view of their mother, Sheela, provide an adult contemplation of the daughters' relationship and balance the emotional tangle.
The lives of these sisters, like the lives of all teenagers, are body-centered, and Johnson's rhythmic prose infuses their social and physical isolation with energy as simple things beckon: the beach, the sea, television, food, and memory. The malevolence that seems to lurk in the corners is the effect of September's moods; Johnson's great accomplishment is her ability to suggest the ways that an older sister's desire for power and disruption permeates shadows, corners, walls, even a bird-watching hut on the beach. The house is solid and still, but lives are filled with movement: "Everything flurries and barks and continues around it." That flurry keeps the reader engaged as the narrative inexorably approaches the final surprising reveal. Writers can study this novel for its kinetic prose, how the chapters shift between first and third person, use of atmospheric detail, and what I admired most, the masterful build-up of suspense and mystery.
Johnson, Daisy. Sisters. E-book, Penguin Publishing Group, 2020.
Filed under: Writing about a sibling relationship