Blue Sisters

Coco Mellors

HarperCollins

Review: Lauren O’Connor-May

I’ve noticed a recurring theme in Coco Mellors’ books and while I don’t think her books would make their way onto a CAL list (if you know, you know) I would recommend that those who regularly read CAL pick up Mellors’ books because they will resonate hard.

If you don’t know what I am talking about, don’t worry, that was deliberate and I have a good reason for the mystery but you’re not missing anything major by not knowing.

Blue Sisters is Mellors’ second novel. Her first, Cleopatra and Frankenstein, released last year, has already topped best-seller lists, been translated into 20 languages and is being adapted for screen.

Blue Sisters tells the story of three sisters Avery, Bonnie and Lucky Blue, who are reeling after losing their middle sister.

More than a year after Nicky Blue’s death, their parents decide to sell the apartment she died in, which also happens to be the sisters’ childhood home.

The eldest, Avery, is hell bent on stopping the sale and calls all her remaining sisters to garner support. Her calls set in motion a chain of events that lead all the sisters back to the apartment, though none of them actually want to be there. There they are confronted with everything they have been struggling to escape, most of which goes far deeper than just Nicky’s death.

I feel like nothing I can write will do justice to this absolutely amazing book. After reading Mellors’ writing I feel like anything I write to try and capture its raw, gritty, moving essence will just look like preschool drawings stuck up next to Monet, so, I will let her writing speak for itself. Here are a few excerpts:

“Bonnie could feel the hot fury Avery secretly harboured toward them roiling like magma beneath the surface of her solicitousness.”

In the same chapter, Bonnie describes her mother’s motherhood as: “an explorer on a particularly gruelling leg of a solo mission she regretted starting but had resigned herself to completing”.

When Avery and Lucky meet for the first time since Nicky’s death, Lucky observes: “Their family had always been good at hellos and goodbyes, moments ending even as they began. It was easy to love someone in the beginnings and endings; it was all the time in between that was so hard.”

And lastly, the moment when the three sisters finally find all of themselves back at the dreaded apartment: “Avery had not yet looked up to see them, and for just a fraction of a second, Bonnie witnessed her sister as she really was. No polish. No facade. No deflection. She didn’t know what had happened, but Avery was hurting. She could feel her sister’s pain in her own chest. Avery was slumped in the doorway, her head bowed, limbs slack, crumpled in on herself. Then she glanced up and saw them. Watching Avery compose herself under their gaze was like watching a great marquee be erected, a slack pile of cloth swiftly transformed by a sharp pull of ropes into a towering structure. As Bonnie raced down the hallway toward her, she thought fleetingly that her sister was always pulling the ropes of herself taut.”

Mesmerising stuff.

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Book review: Blue Sisters