Book Review: The Story Sisters, by Alice Hoffman

Alice Hoffman's latest book, The Story Sisters, is a fantastic and heart-breaking tale of the lives of three sisters. Elv, Megan and Claire are the three girls touched by tragedy, all in their own ways.

Elv is the oldest, and creates a fantasy world (Arnelle) for the trio, with its own rules and language, and the three are the only ones privy to Arnelle's ways. Fantasy elements are nothing new in Hoffman fiction (see "Practical Magic") but there's a darker root here. It's a fractured fairy tale indeed, stained deep and dark with tragedy and curses.

Arnelle's point of origin is sparked into life by a horrible and deranged crime of which Elv is the victim. She also is the savior, in a warped sense, as her self-sacrifice keeps her younger sister Claire safe. Except now Claire has to live with the savage knowledge of what Elv might have suffered in her stead. What Elv's ordeal was at the hand of a demented pervert is slowly revealed to the reader.

Elv goes downhill, is detached from the world, for years, spiraling into wild careless sex, drug abuse, petty crime, and a stint in rehab.

Second sister Megan is the more sensible one, more a bookish type.

Claire is the youngest, and since she is the only one who has any idea what happened to Elv that one awful day, this knowledge, and lack of knowing (on Megan's part as well as that of their mother's), at once reinforces and tears apart the sisters' relationships to varying degrees. Claire is often torn between the two sisters. With Elv she feels a sorrowful kinship in the violation that was almost hers to bear, and with Megan she finds emotional refuge because Megan is not stained by the molestation or the knowledge that it even happened.

Each sister has her own fate to meet, and the family experiences countless tragedies, and some degree of love and the redemption it brings along the way.

The book is a fascinating yet painful work of art. The story of the Story sisters will linger long after the last page is turned.