Author: Jane Corry
Publisher: Pamela Dorman Books
Pages: 352
My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Blood Sisters by Jane
Corry takes us into the lives of two little girls, bound by blood, both the
blood of kinship as well as that of spilled blood, from evil visited upon them
in the past.
The prologue gives us a hint of
innocence, unsuspecting, and how it is destroyed with horrible consequences.
In Part 1, we are in 2016. Alison
Baker runs a stained glass making course at a local college. She is also
suffering from some past tragedy and cuts herself to get away from the pain.
She signs up to teach art to prisoners
in an open prison. But danger, it seems, is lurking within the prison. She
receives threatening notes. At first Alison is
afraid, but then she begins to settle down in the prison, seemingly lulled to
the danger lurking within.
The same tragedy has seen the
institutionalization of Kitty, Alison’s half-sister. Kitty has lost control of
her memories and is unable to give voice to her thoughts. She is also
wheelchair bound for life.
Alison believes that she caused the
death of Vanessa, Kitty’s best friend in school, and the maiming of Kitty. Only
Kitty knows the truth, but she is incapable of telling anyone.
But all along someone is watching them
both, someone who means to punish and destroy them both.
The book is written in the
first-person present tense point of view of Alison and the third person past
tense point of view of Kitty. Part I sees their alternating twin narratives
start in September 2016 and go on till January 2017.
In Part II, we get a flash of 2001. We
are led back to 2017, to the difficulties that Alison is facing, as a prelude
to what happened back in April 2001 to Ali, as she was known then. At this
point, the narratives begin to alternate with Alison in the present day and Ali
in 2001. I was nearly missing Kitty’s POV when Part III began, and Kitty was
back.
Both girls were extremely well drawn,
thanks to the manner in which the author built them up.
I liked Kitty. Even though no one
would give her credit for it, she notices things like A mouth that
smiled. Eyes that didn’t.
The accident has damaged her brain,
specifically her memories, though she still retains her self-centredness, the
basic nature which had been fueled by goading on the part of her best friend,
Vanessa. Despite the special needs she now has, she manages to impress us with
her personality.
The accident has also affected her
motor coordination, her ability to walk and her speech. The words are clear in
her head, but no one can understand them. When she tries to nod her head in
response to a question, it comes out as a shake.
We can see the
disconnect between her thoughts and the interpretation of her caregivers and
the other other inmates. Only Johnny, who suffers from Down’s Syndrome, and
with who she gets into a physical relationship, clearly understands what she is
trying to say as well as if she had actually said it.
At first, I thought
I liked Alison, but then I realized that while I didn’t like Kitty at all,
Alison wasn’t as clean as I’d thought she was. She was capable of deception,
lying, to save herself.
At heart, both
sisters were deeply flawed, subject to human emotions like jealousy, anger,
rage. But they did seek to redeem themselves, and that was good.
The two are
half-sisters, with a seven-year age gap. While they look physically similar,
they have completely different personalities. Kitty is always hostile to
Alison, and their sibling rivalry takes a turn for the worse as the book goes
on.
As Alison says of the tumultuous
relationship, It was like living with the school bully but
never being able to swap classes.
Bit by bit, the author gives us a peek
into what the sisters are really like. For instance, Alison’s reasons for
hating to do portraits, You have to get into someone’s soul to make
it really work. And I definitely don’t want to go there.
The book drew me in. It was
unpredictable. I just didn’t know what was coming next. The revelations kept
piling up.
I particularly appreciated the
sensitivity with which the author described the inmates at the home. Not only
Kitty, but Johnny, Margaret, Duncan and the others were all shown as real humans
with real human needs. The fact that Kitty tended to lash out also becomes
understandable when we get to know of her deep frustration emerging from her
inability to make herself understood.
The only thing that struck a false
note for me was the fact that Kitty’s memories started returning
after she went into labour. It just seemed too pat and unreal.
Also, the manner
in which Kitty’s final revelation came out appeared to be too rushed, as if the
author having drawn out her story, was now anxious to bring it to a close.
After all the
effort that had been put into establishing how spoiled Kitty was, it was
hard to believe that she had any submerged filial feeling for Alison.
Overall, Blood Sisters had a theme of
redemption, of opportunities to right the wrong choices made in the past, of
secrets and lies that hurt those we seek to protect.
Above all, it spoke of the complexity
of the relationships between sisters, the admiration and love, often mixed with
jealousy and loathing.
The author puts it best when she says, Love
is close to hate when it comes to sisters. You’re as close as two humans can
be. You came from the same womb. The same background. Even if you’re poles
apart, mentally. That’s why it hurts so much when your sister is unkind. It’s
as though part of you is turning against yourself.
(I received an ARC from First to Read).
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