Sisterland
Publication Date: June 25, 2013
Pages: 416
Daisy and Violet Shramm were pretty young when they realized that they were special. Not just because they were twins, but because they had special senses. They could sense other people's secrets and have premonitions about the future. From the affair their friend's father was having to the early death of another friend and finally sensing who had kidnapped a young boy for their entire lives they both have "sensed" things.
Flash forward to the year 2009 and the twins are grown up. Daisy now goes by her middle name, Kate, and she is the stay at home mother to two young children. Her husband, Jeremy is a very successful professor at Washington University and his colleague, Courtney and her husband, Hank are their closest friends. Kate knows she lives a blessed life and has successfully forced the "senses" out of her life. Meanwhile, her sister Vi has made a profession out of their "senses". She has regular clients and a new girlfriend, Stephanie. Everything is going smoothly until one day Vi "senses" that an earthquake will hit the St. Louis area and she is interviewed by a local television station, and the professional also interviewed to rebut Vi's claims is Courtney. The claim turns into a media circus and causes tensions between Kate and her husband, not to mention their friends. Kate is torn between supporting her husband and supporting her sister all of it leading up to October 16th, the day that the earthquake is supposed to hit. Who will be right on October 16th? The psychic or the professional?
Curtis Sittenfeld is so masterful in the way she writes her characters and her stories it is nearly impossible to put her books down. Only she could write a literary masterpiece about characters with ESP. From the very first page I got swept up into the lives of Vi and Daisy. She flashes us back to their childhood working her way back to the year 2009. And since the twins were born a month after me, I loved seeing all of the references from my childhood. Not to mention all of the Missouri references. I think one of the things I liked so much about this book were really how normal Vi and Kate really are despite their "senses". They aren't glamorous characters, they lead normal lives and have normal flaws. I also really enjoyed the interaction between Kate & Jeremy and their friends, the Wheelings, even when things get "sticky" their friendship is so well written.
Bottom line,
Sisterland is a really, really good book. From start to finish I was pulled into their story and did not want to put the book down. I know a lot of you wouldn't bother with a book about ESP, but
Sisterland is really one that you should not miss.
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