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A review by kblincoln
The Moon Sisters by Therese Walsh
4.0
Jazz and Olivia Moon live in a small West Virginia town with their alcoholic father and their Slovak grandmother-baker who supports the family with her biscuits.
Of course it isn't that simple. Their mother may or may not have committed suicide. Olivia is a synesthete (a person who experiences senses different from the actual sensory input) and Jazz-- set up by their mother to be the fulfillment of her own wasted life-- is ditching college to work full time at a funeral home.
There are letters, and an aging delivery-bus, and a quest by Olivia to travel to the place her mother has been talking about all her life-- the Cranberry Glades. If Olivia can just get to the glades, and see a will-0-the-whisp, the way her mother wanted to feeling that it would inspire the ending of her years-long novel, then maybe Olivia can understand her mother's end as well.
On the way, they meet some train hoppers, one of whom, Hobbs, hides dark secrets underneath swirling blue and green facial tattoos.
The novel has all the elements of an Oprah Book Club tale just awash in beautiful imagery, wise sayings by Slovak grandmas, sibling relationships complicated by love and envy and disappointment, and a veritable swarm of meta-literary poetics attached to the significance of the mother's novel story, the letters she wrote to her estranged father, and the quest for the will-o-the-whisp.
Despite some of the emotional revelations and beautiful imagery feeling a bit ....not forced, exactly, but slightly hollower than usual because of a self-conscious trying possibly...it was a lovely read which delighted me with descriptions of West Virginia, interesting character development vis-a-vis Olivia's blind synesthesia, and train-hopping terms like 'bull' I'd never encountered before.
Of course it isn't that simple. Their mother may or may not have committed suicide. Olivia is a synesthete (a person who experiences senses different from the actual sensory input) and Jazz-- set up by their mother to be the fulfillment of her own wasted life-- is ditching college to work full time at a funeral home.
There are letters, and an aging delivery-bus, and a quest by Olivia to travel to the place her mother has been talking about all her life-- the Cranberry Glades. If Olivia can just get to the glades, and see a will-0-the-whisp, the way her mother wanted to feeling that it would inspire the ending of her years-long novel, then maybe Olivia can understand her mother's end as well.
On the way, they meet some train hoppers, one of whom, Hobbs, hides dark secrets underneath swirling blue and green facial tattoos.
The novel has all the elements of an Oprah Book Club tale just awash in beautiful imagery, wise sayings by Slovak grandmas, sibling relationships complicated by love and envy and disappointment, and a veritable swarm of meta-literary poetics attached to the significance of the mother's novel story, the letters she wrote to her estranged father, and the quest for the will-o-the-whisp.
Despite some of the emotional revelations and beautiful imagery feeling a bit ....not forced, exactly, but slightly hollower than usual because of a self-conscious trying possibly...it was a lovely read which delighted me with descriptions of West Virginia, interesting character development vis-a-vis Olivia's blind synesthesia, and train-hopping terms like 'bull' I'd never encountered before.