Day 12: The Story Sisters

The Story Sisters by Alice Hoffman.  ISBN: 9780307393869.

I believe this is the first novel I've read by Alice Hoffman, although I've been tempted to read some of her young adult literature.  I was surprised to find a lot of myself in this novel.  I was expecting more of a fairytale existence for the Story family and what I got was a brutal reminder of how hard my teenage years were.  The characters were so real in this that I had trouble figuring out which one I related to the most, so I'll say that I related to them all, but especially Meg, who retreated into her books as her home life became more difficult.

Elv, the eldest daughter, creates her own world, complete with its own language.  She and Claire, the youngest, have a special bond because Elv saved her from a predatory teacher.  Elv eventually begins to use drugs, stay out at all hours of the night, and be promiscuous, all while remaining half in her made up world.  I cannot tell you how close the events in this book came to my real life story, especially the middle part of the book, but I will try without revealing too many family secrets or too many spoilers.

Like Elv, when my brother hit a certain age he started to live in his own world, not quite as detailed as Arnish, and he completely withdrew from the family and became a stranger.  By the time we was fourteen he was sneaking out at night, my mother couldn't keep him in the house and didn't even know how to try, he came home high or drunk and skipped school.  I played the roll of Meg in my household, trying to avoid confrontation with my brother whenever possible, who was more often cruel than not.  My mother tried to do everything, but she couldn't make him go to therapy, she couldn't make him go to school, and she couldn't make him stay home at night.

One night when he was god-knows-where, I found his drug paraphenalia in the bathroom closet and I showed my mother.  It was not the first time I told her I couldn't live with my brother anymore, that he would ruin both of us if he stayed, but it was the first time my mother listened.  That night my mother made plans with her boyfriend to drive my brother to my dad's house in Oklahoma and drop him off.  My brother came home late that night and was too stoned or tired to protest.  I can't imagine what that drive must have been like for my mother, and I'm amazed that my brother didn't try to run away.

My brother, like Elv, eventually improved, and through oddly similar means.  Those years of quiet were much needed to see me through to my full potential.  I was able to make friends without the stigma of being my brother's "uncool" sister.  I had my friends and I had my enemies, and there were no other connections.  It took a long time for me to reconnect to my brother, as it did for Elv and Claire, and some of the losses we both faced in the meantime were devastating, but now we share the joy of watching his son grow up.  And I no longer have to fear his demons.

Day 11: The Story Sisters

The Story Sisters by Alice Hoffman.  ISBN: 9780307393869.

I think one of the things I love most about borrowing books from the library or buying them used is all the extras you get with them.  The left over inscriptions and dedications, the underlining, forgotten bookmarks, and lingering smells.  These are objects that carry their own history, however ephemeral and distant.  You can trace your fingers over the edges of the book that were touched by someone else, but in most cases you will never know who held hat book before you.  There's still that connection though, there is some bond or similarity that caused you to pick up the same book and read it, regardless of your individual responses to it.

I wonder about the person who had The Story Sisters before me.  Whoever they were they lived in a house with a dank, musky smell; perhaps a combination of perfume and cigarettes, or incense.  I can almost smell dirt on the pages, the longer I keep them open the fainter the smell gets, either because I become accustomed to it, or because it is slowly disipating from the paper.

These are not exactly new thoughts, but they have become more refined and intense as I grew from passionate library user to history major to library student and hopefully to professional librarian one day.  As a young woman and even today I go back and forth between wanting a copy of a book that has been circulated as much as possible to one that has never been checked out, despite the obviously outdated cover. 

I feel pity for llibrary books that have never circulated.  Sometimes they are even the rare gems that everyone should have been reading, but were passed over in favor of the latest vampire novel.  These were items selected by diligent librarians who wanted to improve the literary tastes of their patronage, who purchased that well received first novel in the hopes that someone would pick it up and love it, and maybe recommend it to their friends.  I love these books because it feels like they've been waiting for me on the shelf for all those years.

But the battered and abused have their appeal too, as do the brand new copies with shiny covers, those that have been handled and those that will be handled.  There is a joy in being on of the first to read something new.  I think that's why my fiance loves reading my blog posts before they go live, it's why some people go to release parties or pre-order books from their favorite authors.  If they're one of the first or one of the few it makes them feel like they have some ownership over the story, and they do.  They can ruin it for other people.

I think that's why I like sharing my thoughts about the books I'm reading rather than reviews.  It doesn't really give much away.  I can expose important details about the books to you, but until you read them you won't know how they relate to the story; you only know how they affect me.  Rather than seeing the fingerprint I left on the book, you're seeing the fingerprint it's left on me.  And now I have to wonder if and when you read the same books I'm reading, if you'll think of me, and what the book will make you think about.