Synopsis
This luminous tale filled with honesty and love charts the lives of sisters who find their curse and their salvation on the street where they live.
One fateful summer they create their own magical world to escape a tragic encounter that has forever changed their lives. The healing power of imagination and love, the interwoven worlds of fiction and fact, the difference between liars and truth tellers, are at the core of this dangerous fairy-tale world where one mistake can follow you forever. A charismatic man who cannot tell the truth, a neighbor who is not who he appears to be, a clumsy boy in Paris who falls in love and stays there, a detective who finds his heart's desire, a demon who will not let go, all live within the confines of the sisters' world. Elv, Claire, and Meg are the Story Sisters, and each has a fate she must meet alone. One on a country road, one in the streets of Paris, and one in the corridors of her own imagination. At once a coming-of-age tale, a...
The Barnes & Noble Review
Alice Hoffman's prose is nearly gorgeous enough to console us for the tragedies The Story Sisters. It is a book about demons and family bonds; it is very much a work about sisterhood. Jealousy figures in, as do loyalty, protection, friendship, and shifting alliances. The novel begins with the three sisters as young girls, troubling and fascinating daughters to their loving divorcée mother, Annie. We meet them at the Plaza Hotel, dressed in blues that both set them apart and link them: "Teal and azure and sapphire. They liked to wear similar clothes and confuse people as to who was who." Elv, the eldest, is "the most beautiful"; Meg is "a great reader" and Claire, the youngest, is "diligent, kindhearted, never one to shirk chores." When they speak a private language to each other -- "lovely to hear, musical" -- most people are "charmed." But the charm cannot protect the girls themselves -- if anything their virtues seem to call down disaster.