Customer Reviews

Sister

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

A writer of remarkable depth, A. Manette Ansay offers the selective reader a banquet of language in her novel, SISTER. The author fashions exquisite phrases that form perfect and fragile images. It is a joy to read such complexity after the current deluge of popular titles, dressed in the quise of 'simplicity', and seeming more often like 'women's books'. SISTER tells a story that slowly follows the evolution of a young Catholic girl and her brother, growing up on an emotionally barren Wisconsin farm. The sister and brother endure the changes wrought upon the family as the mother takes a part-time job, while the son's battle with his father escalates with the passage of time, until the son finally disappears w/o a trace. In the hollow years that follow her brother's disappearance, the girl becomes a distant spectator, unable to fill the hole left by her younger brother, unable to bridge the distance between parents, precariously close to losing herself in the process. This is a quiet, concise book, a tale particularly familiar to those who have shared this rigidly structured religious (Catholic) background. Thoughtfully crafted, SISTER is not a novel for everyone. But for certain readers it is a work of art, carefully hung against a bare wall in a gilt frame.

I will admit to not getting into Sister as quickly as I did with Vinegar Hill or Midnight Champagne. But around the 5th chapter of so, something happened. The groove of the story began to make an impression on me, and suddenly I found myself savoring the pages that followed. And upon completion of this wonderful novel, A. Manette Ansay has finally and wholly proved herself to me to be an author of incomparable merit and style.

Sister tells the story of 30-year-old Abigail Schiller as she prepares for the birth of her first child. During the course of her pregnancy, Abby reflects upon her childhood and its many facets. Growing up in the Schiller household was not easy. Abby's mother, a rigid Catholic housewife, was always good to her, but tended to turn the other cheek when it came to her father, a strict disciplinarian with chauvinistic views of male and female roles. And then there was Sam, Abby's lovable younger brother whom she protected and adored. Finally, after years of constant torment that dug at him by the picking hands of his father, Sam runs away for good. And over ten years later, Abby realizes, as a mother-to-be, she needs to reconcile her feelings of loss and love for her brother in order for her to move forward in her own life.

Revolving between past and present, Sister's chapters delve into a seemingly normal childhood and its secret, dark undertones, then flash-forwards to a seemingly normal adult life where every movement has some direct correlation to a moment in the past. A beautiful and powerful novel with action told in whispers that quietly unfolds as the pages are turned. Not a novel of great activity and one that may be hard to get into at first, but certainly after novel's end, readers will be left with a feeling of awe and satisfaction. Tremendously readable. Ansay will remain on my bookshelf for life.

Sister, is the story of Abby Schiller, married, pregnant and still haunted by her abusive childhood and the disappearance of her younger brother over ten years ago. Now, as she's about to become a mother, Abby feels the need to revisit her past and put it to rest before the birth of her baby. And so she begins a journey to try to understand her abusive father, her mother, who always looked the other way and her sensitive, artistic brother who left at seventeen, never to be seen or heard from again. And what a journey it is. Ms Ansay is a wonderful, eloquent writer and the strength of her prose literally pulls you into the story and never lets you go. Her scenes are vivid and riveting. Her characters, beautifully drawn. This is a compelling story of love and loss, betrayal and finally forgiveness, written with honesty and insight. A powerful book in its own quiet way.

Few books have touched me as this one has. Ansay has faithfully reproduced the tensions of my own world and that of so many women who would eagerly hold to religious tradition if only we could find our place within it. Ultimately, however, this is not a story about institutionalized religion. It is about a women's search through the confusion of the present to make sense of the past. Sister is a wonderful story that offers food for the soul.

I first read the author's book Vinegar Hill and enjoyed it a great deal. I felt compelled to read Sister and couldn't wait for it to arrive. Sister was a fast read. It was well written and very descriptive. I felt it was a realistic book, and something different from what I'd read before. It was truly entertaining. I lived for a time in rural Wisconsin in a deep Catholic community, and for me reading this book was like stepping back into time. The book kept me guessing throughout with it's story line. Although the ending of the book suprised me. I didn't expect it! Although I don't know if the book is for everyone, I found it to be a facinating read and enjoyed the authors writing style. She was so descriptive that I almost felt that I was there. I'd definitely recommend this book!

A.Manette Ansay's second novel is about loss: loss of family relationships, loss of faith, loss of life, loss of roots. It's yet another dysfunctional family story, one led by a bully of a man. The father taunts Sam, his son, calling him a sissy; he drives Abby, his daughter, to a nervous breakdown with his lectures about feminine virtues. His wife somehow manages to assert her independence and gets a job, further infuriating this man who seems always infuriated.
But while Abby is healed by moving into the home of her intensely Catholic grandmother, Sam falls into insolence, drugs, and punks, then disappears, an event that precipitates the collapse of this already tenuous family.
Beautiful language, tightly controlled narrative, and heartbreaking emotional material make this not a happy book, but one to be treasured.

Impending motherhood causes 30-year-old Abby to reflect on her own childhood--and on her role as Sister, in particular.

Sam and Abigail Schiller grew up in a home steeped in rigid tradition. Their mother and grandmother lean on the teachings of the Catholic Church. And their father reinforces unyielding opinions of masculinity and women's roles. The children retreat: Abby to a dark breakdown and years of living in the "third person;" Sam simply disappears.

As her pregnancy progresses, Abby forces herself to face the life in the past, hoping to find keys to better parenthood and to resolve the mystery of her brother's disappearance.

This isn't a book of deep revelation. It's more of an intellectual journey as Abby searches for truth in the past. She knows Sam was not simply a misguided teenager--he was troubled and capable of terrifying deeds. This sensitive study of family dynamics ends with a powerful statement on faith. More than anything, it is faith that Abby's mother wants her to give her child,"the ability to see beyond the place where you are."

Couple of things right off the bat:

On a mechanical level, Ansay is one hell of a writer. Her words are poetic without resorting to melodrama; strong nouns and verbs throughout; metaphor after metaphor are as beautiful as metaphors can be. Her scenes are formed with acute accuracy, and as a novel, they don't come much tighter than this. She wastes nothing here; everything's golden.

I think the thing that I carried away after blazing through this novel at Crichton-King speed (no joke -- I read this book in six sittings, on three 1.25-hour train rides to NYC) can be distilled to this:

Parents hurt their children (and vice-versa) not through some intentional, innate evil but rather because of who they are and the situation they are in. In a sense, they are all victims of their genes and of the times (social, economical, cultural).

Of course, this doesn't apply in all walks of life, but it certainly applies in this novel. The best part of this book is that the parents are not ghastly, cardboardy caricatures of evil -- they are just people, people who probably shouldn't have gotten together in the first place, let alone have two children. It just about turned my stomach how both of them, in their seemingly harmless way, were slowly destroying their kids. What disturbed me wasn't that they were doing it -- rather, that this same thing has happened to every person who's ever had a parent. It all seemed so real.

The weakest part of the book is what happens to the father. The fact that he goes off the deep end adds a significant crack to the thematic wall of the book. I also wasn't too hip with the present sections where Ansay does a great amount of "framing" -- the present action, if you can call it that, is of the everyday variety -- Abby (the main character) is walking, or gardening, or what have you, and while she's doing these things, she thinks back to her painful childhood.

The strongest section, without a doubt, is the second part, "Distance." This is big time writing, Ansay at her best.

Sister might be a bit slow for some people. She describes things quite a bit, and delves deeply into the main characters' psyche. There's a lot of thinking and re-thinking and so on and so forth. Ansay's style and pace reminded me a whole heck of a lot of Carol Shields' "The Stone Diaries." So if you dug that, you'll dig this, and man, what a heartbreaking hole Ansay digs. I really enjoyed it. Kudos to another fine writer out of Cornell's MFA program.

I'm a big fan of A. Manette Ansay. I started with her books with Oprah and VINEGAR HILL and ordered this and MIDNIGHT CHAMPAGNE to see what else she could do. SISTER is my favorite, hands down.

SISTER tells an engrossing tale of Abby, now a woman and soon to be mother, whose brother mysteriously disappeared 10 years ago and has yet to resurface. Looking through memories of the past, and things that happened in her family, she re-examines what may possibly have happened to her brother, while at the same time, looking at the things that happened to her parents and to her as well.

There are parts that are unsettling and uncomfortable, the confrontations written as if they had been experienced and you feel almost like an intruder on a deeply personal family scene. The writing is clear and well done, and the book is really an excellent look at family, pain, grief, religion, gender roles, and self exploration. A very good read.

Very well written account of a rural Wisconsin family's struggle to free itself from the control of an inept father and a blind faith in catholic doctrine. The novel is told through the recollection of the sole surviving child, Abigail. The most telling aspect of Abigail's life is revealed through the relationship of her father with the rest of the family. The more he attempts to control the will of family members the more they withdraw. The mother rebels by taking on a job in defiance of her husband and her mother. She finds refuge and a sense of self-worth not defined by her "duties" as a wife or her role as a mother. Abigail withdraws into the comfort of music and the church, only to eventually question the sustainability of both. The son turns to drugs and alcohol as an escape from the agony of not being able to live up to his father's notions of strength and masculinity (how paradoxical that the "last man standing" in the family are actually the women). This novel is complete with excellent writing, a strong, viable story line and extraordinary characters (Ansay was even able to elicit from this reader a bit of compassion for the father). Ansay's use of language is precise and at times quite poetic. The novel underscores the truth that family shapes the offspring and that faith is larger than a church.