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    Sisterland: A Novel
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    Sisterland: A Novel
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    Sisterland: A Novel
    Ebook526 pages8 hours

    Sisterland: A Novel

    By Curtis Sittenfeld

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

    NAMED ONE OF THE BEST NOVELS OF THE YEAR BY
    Slate • Daily Candy • St. Louis Post-Dispatch • The Guardian (U.K.)

    “Novelists get called master storytellers all the time, but Sittenfeld really is one. . . . What might be most strikingly excellent about Sisterland is the way Sittenfeld depicts domesticity and motherhood.”—Maggie Shipstead, The Washington Post
     
    “Psychologically vivid . . . Sisterland is a testament to [Curtis Sittenfeld’s] growing depth and assurance as a writer.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
     
    “[Sittenfeld’s] gifts are in full effect with this novel, and she uses them to create a genuinely engrossing sense of uncertainty and suspense.”—Sloane Crosley, NPR’s All Things Considered

    Curtis Sittenfeld, author of American Wife and Prep, returns with a mesmerizing novel of family and identity, loyalty and deception, and the delicate line between truth and belief.
     
    From an early age, Kate and her identical twin sister, Violet, knew that they were unlike everyone else. Kate and Vi were born with peculiar “senses”—innate psychic abilities concerning future events and other people’s secrets. Though Vi embraced her visions, Kate did her best to hide them.
     
    Now, years later, their different paths have led them both back to their hometown of St. Louis. Vi has pursued an eccentric career as a psychic medium, while Kate, a devoted wife and mother, has settled down in the suburbs to raise her two young children. But when a minor earthquake hits in the middle of the night, the normal life Kate has always wished for begins to shift. After Vi goes on television to share a premonition that another, more devastating earthquake will soon hit the St. Louis area, Kate is mortified. Equally troubling, however, is her fear that Vi may be right. As the date of the predicted earthquake quickly approaches, Kate is forced to reconcile her fraught relationship with her sister and to face truths about herself she’s long tried to deny.
     
    Funny, haunting, and thought-provoking, Sisterland is a beautifully written novel of the obligation we have toward others, and the responsibility we take for ourselves. With her deep empathy, keen wisdom, and unerring talent for finding the extraordinary moments in our everyday lives, Curtis Sittenfeld is one of the most exceptional voices in literary fiction today.

    Praise for Sisterland
     
    “What’s most captivating about Sisterland is the intimate, intense portrayal of identical twin sisters. . . . [The novel] unfolds like a good prophecy—inevitable and shocking.”—San Francisco Chronicle

    “The accomplished Sittenfeld . . . is as skillful as ever at developing an intriguing premise and likable characters. . . . Sittenfeld’s affectionate take on sibling rivalry is spot-on.”—People
     
    “The power of [Sittenfeld’s] writing and the force of her vision challenge the notion that great fiction must be hard to read. She is a master of dramatic irony, creating fully realized social worlds before laying waste to her heroines’ understanding of them. . . . Her prose [is] a rich delight.”—The Boston Globe
     
    “Wise and often wickedly entertaining . . . Readers who have siblings—especially women with sisters—will likely come away feeling as if the author really is psychic.”—USA Today
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRandom House Publishing Group
    Release dateJun 25, 2013
    ISBN9780812994407
    Unavailable
    Sisterland: A Novel
    Author

    Curtis Sittenfeld

    Curtis Sittenfeld is the bestselling author of the novels Prep, The Man of My Dreams, American Wife, and Sisterland, which have been translated into twenty-five languages. Her nonfiction has been published widely, including in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Time, Vanity Fair, and Glamour and broadcast on public radio’s This American Life. A native of Cincinnati, she currently lives with her family in St. Louis.

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    Reviews for Sisterland

    3.5/5

    444 ratings53 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Light and fun.
    • 3/5
      Sisterland by Curtis Sittenfeld is a book about identical twins, Kate and Vi, who share a special sense. . . somewhat of a psychic power. Although Kate does her best to hide it, to fit in, to be “normal,” Vi isn’t ashamed of her ability, which causes tension between the sisters.When Vi receives a premonition that indicates danger, their lives and families are disrupted.Throughout the book, even though Kate and Vi argue, they are there for each other as sisters. And that’s something I can relate to. Although my sister and I are 4 and a half years apart, we weren’t close until I left for college, and (dare I say it??) she totally missed me. Now we’re really close, and I consider my sister to be a best friend.For the full review, visit Love at First Book
    • 4/5
      Great beach read for those who like Kristin Hannah. I don't always enjoy adult books but this one kept me interested all the way through. Very clever insight into twins who, although identical, are so very different...one embracing her psychic ability and the other denying it.
      I really enjoyed this and would recommend it!
    • 3/5
      If you’ve been in a bookstore in the last few months, you’ve probably seen this book. Or maybe I’m the only one who kept noticing it. The cover shows two white girls, probably ten years old, with their heads together, half of each face outside of the frame. It was part of a ‘buy two, get one free’ sale at Powell’s (the same one that resulted in me reading The Martian, so I’m forever thankful for it), and the back looked like it might be good. And it was, mostly.

      The book is set in St. Louis, and is told from the point of view of Kate, who has an identical twin sister Violet (Vi). According to the back cover “…in junior high, Kate makes a fateful decision that drives the sisters apart.” Eventually the sisters “find themselves drawn together again.”

      I don’t think that really adequately captures what this book is about. Maybe it’s a good thing, because I’m not sure I would have read it if I’d actually known what it was about. I’m not spoiling anything that you don’t learn ten pages in – these sisters are psychic. Yeah, I didn’t get a supernatural vibe from that description either, but that sixth sense is kind of a giant part of the book, and since it is introduced in the first chapter, it’s kind of odd it isn’t mentioned in the blurb. Or maybe they rightfully thought it might turn off people who would otherwise enjoy it. The ‘fateful decision’ also isn’t, really fateful. Or nearly as dramatic as the description would describe.

      But the book is really interesting because it follows a woman who is otherwise what we’d likely describe as ordinary. Educated woman not working outside the home because she’s raising two young children; husband with a decent job. She also has a less than ideal family, and had a much less than ideal childhood. The author does, I think, a good job of creating a very vivid world, and showing that not everyone who we think is ‘ordinary’ is as they appear. I’m not thrilled with the ending, although it seems fairly true to the characters involved. I say add it to your library list.
    • 5/5
      Although there were a few details I didn't like, over all I enjoyed this book very much. The relationship between the twins, one being kind of normal and main stream and the other flighty new age free spirited, I could really relate to. I'll be looking for other books by this author.
    • 2/5
      I had high hopes for this book. It looked like it would be really good. However it was a major let down. Though I could related with the main character and her struggles with keeping her identity while not failing as a stay at home mom with 2 kids and a wife I believe she was seriously depressed the whole time. The way her relationships were and the way she treated everything that happened was somewhat annoying. I thought this book would have more edge to it as the main concept was that her and her twin were psychic. It's been a long time since I've had to rate a book lower than a 3 star.
    • 3/5
      This story had a lot of things going on in it, and at times I wasn't quite sure where we were going to end up, but overall I enjoyed it. The author did a good job portraying the loyalty and betrayals and just plain messiness of family life, particularly among sisters. 3.5 stars.
    • 2/5
      It was ok. One twin, Kate, was very neurotic. She was uncomfortable with her psychic gifts and quite uncomfortable in her own skin really. The other twin, Vi, embraced her psychic gifts, was kind of sloppy, irresponsible, and outspoken. Both were narcissistic but in different ways.

      Kate was self-indulgent in her neurotic anxieties to the point it took over her life. She was a control freak who lost control of herself at one point.

      Vi was a bit harder for me to figure out because the novel was written from Kate's point of view. Vi was definitely quite self-absorbed. She might have had better luck becoming a mature adult if Kate didn't always bail her out. There was enabling going on.

      The writing style was good. The storyline sort of fizzled for me and I felt the end was rushed and enigmatic. On a side note, I've read a few books lately in which the male characters have to put up with a lot of crap from the female characters. It often results in the male characters seeming to have few flaws, which is very hard to believe!
    • 4/5
      While not a 5 star book in my opinion, this WAS a good book and I would recommend it to others.
    • 3/5
      Very good, but not great. About sisters, yes. But also about twins, psychic abilities, families, and choices. I liked the characters, and the story line(s). But near the end it took a surprising turn I wasn't expecting. I'm not sure it really contributed to the rest of the story. Other reviews have said there wasn't a likable character in the book. I disagree; I liked almost everyone, at least at times.
    • 2/5
      I was very disappointed in this book. I skipped a lot of it. I think I confused it with another book with "sisters" or "sisterhood" in the title.
    • 5/5
      Another fantastic book by Curtis Sittenfeld. I wasn't entirely sure if I would like this book- I could not finish Prep because the narrator bothered me too much but I couldn't put down American Wife. After reading Sittenfeld's latest, I am sensing a pattern of not entirely likable narrators that are able to tell a fantastic story.

      The narrator of this novel is Kate Tucker, an average suburban housewife. She stays at home with her 2.5 children behind her white picket fence and her husband who is a professor at Washington University in St. Louis. (Admittedly, the connection to WashU and St. Louis made the book that much more enjoyable, as I am a student there myself.) However, the story that results is far from a typical suburban drama.

      Kate (real name Daisy Kathleen) and her identical twin sister Violet are gifted with ESP. While Violet embraces her gift and has become a self-professed psychic, Kate tries to leave her senses behind her and carry on with a normal life. However, when Violet goes on the news claiming that there will be a disastrous earthquake in St. Louis, Kate finds it difficult to keep up with her normal life. She ends up getting caught in the whirlwind that her sister started and finds that her life will never be the same.

      While this book does focus on Kate and Violet's ESP, it is more a novel of family conflict and attempted resolution. Sittenfeld is a gifted writer who can take a not entirely likable narrator and weave a heartfelt story of her trials and successes. While I was not sure that I would enjoy this book because of the supernatural element, I decided to give it a try because my love of American Wife and I was well rewarded. I may have to take another stab at Prep and see if, despite the shortcomings of the narrator, Sittenfeld manages to tell another well-rounded, beautifully written story.
    • 4/5
      Once I got past the first few chapters, I actually liked this book and will probably read it again. it was slow to start, but otherwise entertaining.

      Read it again and liked it.
    • 3/5
      One of those books with characters who didn't seem likeable. None of them were horrible people, but more bland, flat & whiny. I did want to know what was going to happen so I was compelled to keep reading which is why it gets 3 stars instead of 2.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed most of this book but the end left me with a bitter taste in my mouth.
    • 4/5
      Great audio book -- like listening to the conversation of people in the next booth at a restaurant. Intriguing and interesting premise: twin sisters Violet and Daisy (later Kate)have "senses" which they discovered at a young age when they "predicted" a fire at their neighbors' house. Daisy uses hers in Jr. high to gain popularity by channeling a Ouija board and helping the Queen bee of her grade with her love life. This ultimately backfires in the typical adolescent way. Violet becomes more attuned to her powers in college with a meditative experience of light which she calls "Guardian." Flash forward to present day where Kate is now the married mother of 2 young children and has completely renounced her power, and Vi has become self-employed as a psychic. Both sisters live in St. Louis, not far from where they grew up and have a fractious relationship, though it is rooted in love. Vi has predicted a major earthquake for St. Louis and becomes a local (and briefly, national) celebrity. Kate bristles at the publicity and the impact on her family and best friends -- her husband and the wife (Courtney) of the other couple are both geologists at Wash. U. Meanwhile, Kate and Hank are the stay-at-home parents of the little kids. This story is far-reaching through the interior and exterior lives of all the characters and moves backward to examine Vi & Kate's childhood and forward again to the present with the impending earthquake. What if there really is a disaster? Or what if it's more of a figurative earthquake -- some cataclysmic situation that rocks the foundation you've created? Well done on Sittenfeld's part to coordinate all these situations so seamlessly.
    • 2/5
      Daisy and Violet are identical twins in very few ways. As adults, they don't even look much alike and they certainly lead different types of lives but they still have one thing in common - they can sometimes sense future events. Violet chose to embrace her psychic ability and leads a more flamboyant life than Daisy - experimenting with sexuality, giving up driving, and expressing her opinion no matter how offensive or rude. Daisy denies her ability and chose a more standard "married with children" life with Jeremy. She changes her name to Kate so that no one from high school will recognize her and tries to get along in life without making any waves. Violet's prediction of a major earthquake in St. Louis shakes up both of their lives. Suddenly, Vi is on national TV and Kate can't decide whether Vi is just selfishly seeking attention or truly senses impending disaster.The majority of the book occurs in Kate's mind, thinking back on her relationship with her sister. But that relationship never much changes. Daisy has always been somewhat embarrassed by Vi, feels superior to her, but doesn't have much self-confidence either. Kate's life is boring but Sittenfeld manages to write in such a way that the reader expects something big to happen. And something finally does, but it's wholly unsatisfying.Unlikable, uninteresting characters, a meandering plot, and a melancholy and snooty tone - there just isn't much to like in this book.
    • 4/5
      Interesting read. I was tempted to stop at various points but I do think it is worth finishing,
    • 4/5
      Violet and Daisy are twins and both have psychic abilities. In their teen years, they are not well accepted by their peers. They rely on each other for companionship. When they go off to college Daisy reinvents herself and becomes Kate and Violet drops out of school. Violet counts on her psychic skills to make a living. Kate marries and has a family. Violet floats through life and Kate feels the need to take care of her. Violet predicts an earthquake for the St. Louis area and is suddenly thrust into the lime light. Kate’s husband, Jeremy is attending a conference on the date of the predicted earthquake. Kate begs him to stay home. While Jeremy is gone Kate does something to jeopardize her marriage. This book is about relationships with parents, siblings, spouses and children.
    • 1/5
      I liked the way the book started out, but the ending was filled with too much angst for me. Too many unanswered questions and turmoil but I guess that was the point. I must not have been in the right frame of mind - I put myself in Daisy's place and couldn't take the pressure.
    • 2/5



      Another reader of this book decided to rename this book: "Exhaustively and Minutely Detailed Memoir of the Most Boring Person Ever." I think this other reader hit the nail head on.

      I love the thought of ESP using twin girls; who doesn't?? And I enjoyed it in a three star kind of way until about 2/3 of the way through. Until the book's "earthquake" that is, and then all of the sudden I'm reading some cheesy Jodi Picoult book. Daisy/Kate does something SO unimaginably stupid I cannot even believe it, and Vi virtually disappears from the story at this point. ARGH!

      It made absolutely no sense that someone of Jeremy's caliber would find himself with someone as dull, unimaginative, incurious, and unambitious as Kate/Daisy. At least Sittenfeld could have made her lively or interesting outside of her ESP. She wasn't even a particularly good mother. Would it have killed her to teach Rosie some damn manners and to not refer to herself CONSTANTLY in the third person? It was kind of cute - at first - but it got old REAL fast.

      Also lots of words and paragraphs describing how rilly rilly hard it is to be a stay at home mother. I have no patience for that kind of shit. I LIVED IT. I have three kids, and wi almost NO help at all. You don't get to tell me just how difficult your life is, when you can order $30 organic Swedish cotton outfits for your children, and we (and other families) would have to go without food. Or have the electric turned off!

      This book read like an English Lit paper gone wrong. Stories should have details, yes, but describing the color and consistency of your baby's diaper blowouts should not be one of them. And first person is a choice one makes when one has a personality - not when we are merely slogging through the day - and thoughts - of a person who is just words on a page. Kate/daisy kept jumping back and forth between the past and the present willy-nelly, and without even changing chapters, or announcing it. I'm getting to hate that....

      I think this book would have been better served as a long short story. It is essentially about two twins, Violet and Daisy (turned Kate) who know from a young age that they have "senses," ie, psychic abilities. Now, I have about zero tolerance for overdoing it with the ESP stuff. But I am not convinced that there isn't something to this psychic thing, perhaps in small part because I myself have had senses if not downright dreams about things/predicted news that I had no reason to know ahead of time. In fact, the overall development of this concept has potential - Violet decides to turn her psychicness into a business whereas Kate, who becomes a wife and mom, prefers to leave the anxiety this brings behind.

      The plot, however, wears rather thin. Overall it is about Violet's prediction that a devastating earthquake is headed towards their home town of St. Louis, and people really buy into this, all ver town! and the entire book is pretty much centered around will there or will there not be one. But it drags, and it drrraaagsssss, and it drrrrrraaaaaaaagssssssss........
      The issues, in addition to anorexic plot line, were as follows:
      1. The central characters.
      Violet, while wholly 'unlikable', is at least somewhat developed, but her development is largely her being a selfish jerk whose bad behavior is always reliant upon responsible, patience of a saint Kate. Kate's husband, Jeremy, is even MORE of a saint, and this gets really wearisome as the two are the biggest martyrs and also intensely dull.
      2. The writing. This book is guilty of having faaaaaaaaar too many intense details about the character, being in her head waaayyyy too much, and leaving us no room to be in a story, let alone having no sense of who this person was outside the intensity of her thoughts.
      3. The conclusion. I can't give this away, because all this book had going for it was the eventual suspense of A-the earthquake and B-the something else. but the two things, especially the something else, hit a certain fevered pitched of utter unrealism, and the characters just got away with way too much, and felt like people that I would never meet and frankly, even if they did exist, I wouldn't even want to.
      I was really disappointed by this one, and if anything it serves as a really important lesson in writing: a character needs to stand on her own, needs to feel like a person rather than a collection of inane memories and observations.
      2 stars for boring me silly. I'm unsure whether I will ever try and read another book by this author. What a let-down. :(

    • 4/5
      I almost didn't read this based on others' reviews on GoodReads, so glad I listened to a friend instead who thought I would like it. Really a compelling read though I had just sworn off yet another book about twins, this one was told really well.
    • 5/5
      I saw Curtis Sittenfeld read from Sisterland at last year's Iowa City Book Festival. The book is about twins who have ESP. Kate has tried to squelch her abilities, while Violet has tried to make a career as a medium. The two sisters are able to co-exist in their hometown of St. Louis, even though Kate's life as a suburban wife and mother, is much different from Violet's single life. But when Violet predicts that an earthquake will hit St. Louis, the whole country's attention is drawn to the two sisters. At first, I wasn't sure that interested in a book about two sisters with ESP. But this book isn't really about the ability to predict the future. Instead it is about two women figuring out who they are and who they want to be. Issues of balancing between work and family and standing out versus blending in resonated with me. Sittenfeld knows how to tell a story as well. As the date for the predicted earthquake draws near and tension arises in the relationship between Kate and Violet, the pace of the book picks up. By the end, I had come to really care for Kate and Violet.
    • 2/5
      I had high hopes for this book. It looked like it would be really good. However it was a major let down. Though I could related with the main character and her struggles with keeping her identity while not failing as a stay at home mom with 2 kids and a wife I believe she was seriously depressed the whole time. The way her relationships were and the way she treated everything that happened was somewhat annoying. I thought this book would have more edge to it as the main concept was that her and her twin were psychic. It's been a long time since I've had to rate a book lower than a 3 star.
    • 5/5
      I have mixed feelings about this book. It was terribly compelling and by that I mean I was so frustrated and upset with the characters and their choices that I actually cried at the end of the book. Talk about doomed to repeat history. I haven't been this emotional about a book since Jo Jo Moyes': Me Before You but I was uplifted by that book. So if you like emotionally jarring, frustratingly real characters, this book is for you.
    • 5/5
      Oh the detail in this book----the audio version made me feel as though I was right there, listening to each and every descriptive moment in this evolving twin sister relationship centered around their ESP capabilities and the surrounding things that happen in their respective relationships over time. I really liked the fact that Sittenfeld did not leave us hanging---even though she could easily add a sequel to this.
    • 4/5
      The twin sisters in Sisterland are psychic. Flamboyant Violet embraces - and commercializes - her gift, while reticent Kate, our narrator, is intent on suppressing hers. Kate is beside herself when Violet predicts that a major earthquake is going to hit their home town of St. Louis, especially when the national media get involved. Although Kate herself cannot dismiss Violet's vision and contributes to the media frenzy by assigning a date to the catastrophe, it still seems as if she is more concerned with Violet's weight, bad hair and bad manners than with the prospect of an earthquake squashing her kids.I really liked Sittenfeld's Prep and I really liked this. Her characters breathe, and they are all multifaceted. The heart of the book is much more in family relationships, rendered with considerable complexity, than in paranormal activity. It's not hard to believe in the story even if you absolutely do not believe in psychic ability, as I certainly do not - the reader can find natural explanations for most of the purported visions. (Only a part of the story concerned with finding a missing child required absolute suspension of disbelief). The reader isn't asked to pit one character against another, although I generally sympathized with crazy Violet over rigid Kate, with her pursed-lipped judgment against everyone around her. Kate is an unreliable narrator, and when we tell the stories of ourselves in our family, aren't we all?
    • 2/5
      Twins often have a psychic connection with each other, but in the case Violet and Kate they have “senses” which reach past being able to feel what the other is feeling. Kate has “given up” her senses in the hope of having a life with her husband and children that does not involve the drama of being psychic. Violet, on the other hand, has embraced her ability and even helped police solve a kidnapping case. Predicting a massive earthquake for St. Louis, Violet is suddenly thrown into the spotlight and, as much as she tries to avoid it, some of the spotlight spills out and onto Kate. When it turns out that Violet may have been wrong in certain aspects of her prediction, although people are relieved, things also begin to get a little ugly.

      The book started out with a bang. I was involved with the story, intrigued by the different attitudes the two sisters had about their abilities, enjoying the fact that despite their differences (and arguments) you knew they loved each other. Then somewhere around the two-third’s point, this book took a sudden turn into the realm of a seedy romance novel. It was not a good turn. The original story line began to fade and then practically disappeared all together in favor of the new turn of events. By the time Ms. Sittenfeld brought back a mere mention of it again she had already lost my interest. It seemed to me as if she had two fairly strong story ideas and tried to include them in one book. Personally, she should have kept them separate, fleshed out each one and then given them their own stage.
    • 1/5
      Did you ever try something different – an unusual combination of ingredients for a dinner, an avant-garde idea for a painting or composition, an unique decorating scheme – and realized when you were done that you not only missed the mark, you didn’t even hit the target at all? Then you are smarter than this author, who missed the target and yet still managed to get this book published. (Maybe she IS smarter than I give her credit for being!) The past, present, and a bit of the future lives of these twin sisters meander all over the pages of this novel. If you combined the twins into one woman, you still wouldn’t have a person with the common sense God gave a goose. At least geese have instincts! It might have been worth reading if this book had an actual plot, if it had believable characters, or if it caused me to care even a wit about what happened to them. It doesn’t, they aren’t, and I don’t. I finished reading it because it was chosen for one of my book clubs. I did my assignment -I read the book. I deserve a gold star – this book deserves a rewrite.
    • 3/5
      I enjoy curtis Sittenfeld's wrining. This novel was about two twin sisters who have psychic abilitiesbut only one sister feels the need to use them. Daisy the other sister believes her senses are a hindrance in her life and she wants to live as normal a life as she can.