Customer Reviews

Three Girls and Their Brother: A Novel

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

There are moments in Teresa Rebeck's Three Girls and Their Brother where the satire is sharp and precise. Most of that satire is found in Rebeck's portrayal of the publicists, agents, and media that attach themselves to another's celebrity. Rebeck utilizes the copious amount of time that she's obviously spent with these parasites to create characters that are ruthless in their desire to both maintain their status and perpetuate a celebrity's fame. When the story is focused on these characters, the book works.

The bad news is that the book doesn't focus on them often enough. Instead, the story focuses on the Heller siblings, who are bland main characters. Despite Rebeck's efforts to give them a unique voice by having each sibling act as sole narrator for several chapters, the main characters seem to be the same individual (a surprising result, given Rebeck's background as a playwright). Worse yet, the plot has some gaping holes that beg to be addressed, but never are. For instance, despite a couple of hints, the answer as to how the Heller girls received a cover shoot for the New Yorker magazine is left unanswered. Also briefly mentioned and then dropped is a possible incest storyline. Plot holes like these give the appearance that Rebeck wasn't sure how to develop the plot.

In the end, Three Girls and Their Brother is just an okay book. As I mentioned before, there are moments of great satire within the book that are definitely worth reading. But, those moments are few and fleeting. Instead, the reader is left with a book that wants to be a biting satire of the celebrity culture, but ends up having no teeth.

I picked up this book on a whim and I'm really glad I did. The first night I read 88 pages and I finished it two nights later. Maybe it's because I do enjoy a bit of gossip (dlisted anyone?). It was interesting to see scandal from the other side, I guess I won't be so quick to judge from now on. I thought the author was really able to capture the voices of the 4 main characters so well, I got very attached to them. I was sad when the book ended and that hasn't happened to me in a long time. Thank you Ms. Rebeck, I needed that.

Noted playwright, Theresa Rebeck's tongue-in-cheek debut novel exposes the dark underbelly of all that fame does--and doesn't have to offer.

When three adolescent auburn-haired sisters gain notoriety for--well, not much of anything but their fiery hair and literary giant grandfather--their lives are turned upside down. There's Daria Heller, the oldest at 19, with an inflated sense of self and an aspiration to become an actress. Polly is the second child, who at 18 is precocious and wishy-washy. Then there's Amelia, the youngest and most rebellious at 14, who cares less about fame than her sisters.

The girls' father enters the picture sporadically and inconsistently. Their stage mother has a drinking problem and will stop at nothing to push her daughters into the public eye. Colette is the Heller sisters' overzealous agent and the driving force behind their mother. Then there's Phillip, the brother who helplessly stands by and gets caught up in everything as his sisters' drama unfolds.

Rebeck's book. Three Girls and Their Brother is refreshingly candid portrayal of sibling rivalry and showcases familial dysfunction at its finest. The novel takes us through the glitzy parties, champagne-soaked celebrity encounters, glamorous photo shoots and the pesky paparazzi who document everything they bump into along the way.

Three Girls and Their Brother is divided into four parts, told from the first-person perspectives of Phillip, Amelia, Polly and Daria. Rebeck has easily transitioned from playwright to novelist. It's clear, when reading the book, she's mastered the art of conversation, as conversation among the siblings will resonate with you.

The plot moves easily, and when reading, one is reminded of other poignant, existential character exhibits, such as J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey.

As the press, photo shoots and requests for the Heller sisters increase exponentially, the relationship dynamic among the sisters and Phillip sharply turns. Once a team, the sisters now try to outdo each other.

Will fame be the downfall of this already crumbling family? Will they be able to withstand being put under the microscope?

Armchair Interviews says: It's worth your while to find out.

this book is what it tis. Just fluff and good at it. It held my interest and Rebeck kept the story going. I would read more by this author.

THREE GIRLS AND THEIR BROTHER by Theresa Rebeck
September 4, 2008

Rating: 3.5/5 Stars

I read THREE GIRLS AND THEIR BROTHER a few months back. It is the rather auspicious fiction debut by Pulitzer finalist Theresa Rebeck. In short, the story revolves around a family of minor celebrities that becomes front page news after a provocative photo shoot of the three sisters, Daria (age 18), Polly (age 17) and Amelia (14). Brother Phillip (age 15) is left out, and all throughout the story, it is shown how left out he is not only in their professional lives but also in their personal lives as well.

The siblings get the attention of the media mainly because their grandfather is a famous writer but they are beauties and it makes for a sensational story. Phillip is overly protective of the youngest sister, Amelia, and this shows in the first section of the book. By the second section, their mother has gotten rid of Phillip and has sent him to live with his father, to get him out of the way so he doesn't continue to influence Amelia. In the meantime, Amelia gets into some trouble involving a famous actor who becomes smitten with her (the age gap is one problem) but she tries desperately to thwart his attentions. She also winds up getting a part in an off-Broadway play that this same actor is starring in, and things go downhill. The other two sisters seem jealous of Amelia's popularity, at least that is how it appears to the reader.

I'm not going to go on and on with the plot. It's a very involved story with each sibling taking turns at narrating, giving the reader a very different viewpoint of what is actually happening. I found it very refreshing to go from section to section, only to find that what I thought was occurring was really not happening at all. You get a different perspective each time you move on to another section of the book.

While I can't give THREE GIRLS AND THEIR BROTHER a 5 star rating or even a 4, I am recommending it because this is one of those books that you can't put down. I can imagine this book being made into a movie, easily. The story to me read like a movie script. The reader does need to remember that this is a satire on the life of actors and those wannabes who crave fame and notoriety, so a lot of the action was over the top, including the ending, but that made sense after reading the book. However, I guess that over the top ending was one of the reasons I didn't give it as high a rating as I could have. A beach read for sure, THREE GIRLS AND THEIR BROTHER might even make my top list for 2008. It's a book I will not forget easily.

I only have myself to blame. I should have read the back cover, where the only 'rave review' is by Vogue magazine. This absolute piece of junk, should never have seen the light of day. Vacuous characters, stupid plot (if that's what you want to call it), and none of it seems even remotely convincing. Her characters read like caricatures of people we've all heard about, and the teenage 'boy' protagonist is so unbelievable with his 'like' language (she obviously thought inserting 'like' every few words would make his character convincing. Doesn't).
Honestly, please stick to screenplays. This book is terrible.

This was such a fun book and so seemingly believable. If you ever indulge in any sort of celebrity watching, or wonder how pictures of the same "it girls" appear endlessly in magazine after magazine, you realize that there is a whole culture (sub-culture?) feeding our fascination with the famous and fabulous. The way the story is progressed through the points of view from youngest to oldest of the siblings adds a great insight to how family dynamics, ambitions and even birth order impacts how they see (or don't see) the same events. While I enjoyed the family drama and comedic aspects, even better were the inside New York/Hollywood media-gossip column-publicist-stylist-theater-and-modeling contexts, which seemed very "ripped from the headlines" and were thoroughly entertaining. From start to end, the story was incredibly absorbing; I was reading on the subway and even missed my stop, on two different occasions! Very highly recommended!

You wont be able to put it down...even if you dont like reading. Mesmerizing a hypoitic red hair trance

"Now that it's all over, everybody is saying it was the picture, that stupid picture was behind every disaster that would eventually befall my redheaded sisters." So begins Theresa Rebeck's poised fiction debut, a story of the pitfalls and pressures of modern-day celebrity. When famed literary critic Leo Heller's beautiful granddaughters are chosen for a photo shoot for The New Yorker, no one could have known what heights (and havoc) would follow.

Daria, Polly and Amelia Heller have lived rather typical lives as young high school students in Brooklyn, NY. After the photo shoot with esteemed photographer Helmet Lang, they find themselves catapulted into the dizzying world of New York celebrity. That one seemingly benign photo crowned them the "It Girls" for the 21st century, and their lives were never the same.

The two older sisters seized upon the opportunity as a lifeline out of a dysfunctional home with little prospects. Amelia, the youngest sister at 14, is the least impressed by it all but finds herself kept out of school and in the chicest clubs, hanging out with movie stars and being offered all the excesses of adult success. And what of their poor brother, Philip? Poor unbalanced Philip finds their new life untenable. Their former beauty queen mother, so hungry for fame herself, is willing to abandon her only son in order for her girls to succeed, considering it collateral damage. After the picture comes the agent and then the lifestyle, the nightlife, the offers of acting parts and, ultimately, the inevitable downfall.

Rebeck --- known for plays such as the Pulitzer Prize-nominated Omnium Gatherum, The Scene and her recent Broadway debut, Mauritius --- has turned her keen eye to the modern-day media celebrity. Whether we want to or not, we're all well aware of the ups and downs of the Britneys and Lindsays of our ever-present, celebrity-loving culture. Starlets and heiresses and their hijinx have bounded off the gossip pages and have become mainstream news. Try as you might to ignore it, they are everywhere. According to her publisher, Rebeck got the inspiration to write THREE GIRLS AND THEIR BROTHER after seeing a photo of the Hilton sisters. She began thinking, "What would happen if an ordinary family became the focus of a ravenous media? How would it change them?" In this, her first novel, she gets to explore the ever-fickle nature of fame and why it's so important to people today.

THREE GIRLS AND THEIR BROTHER takes a more realistic and cautionary look at the perils of fame. It doesn't glorify or sugarcoat the ravages of too-sudden recognition, or the celebrity we witness so often today --- the celebrity that comes with being famous for fame's sake. Young girls with no discernable skills or talent leap off Page Six and into the newspapers and magazines with equal weight given to politicians or other newsmakers. Their one ability might just be the art of having your photo taken and often. Or releasing your so-called "private" sex tape into the right hands. Or perhaps their brushes with the law, instead of vilifying them, serve to make them even more renowned. Rebeck also examines the parents' role in all of this. When a mom or dad is so ambitious themselves, willing to sacrifice their child's safety or well-being in order to reach dizzying heights of fame, how can that child be expected to grow up in a well-adjusted manner? What examples are being set for them?

Told from four different points of view --- first Philip and then each of the three sisters --- Rebeck's talent shines as she casts an acerbic eye on the capricious lifestyle the Heller family adopts, at the expense of one of their own. The reader sympathizes a little with each character, but none are truly likable, which perhaps best illustrates the author's point: these days, ordinary people devoid of talent and who aren't even very nice or decent become ridiculously famous for no good reason. And you can be sure that no good will come of it. But in Rebeck's capable hands, the reader can see the harsh realities of modern-day celebrity, from a comfortable distance, as they breathe a sigh of relief that this is not their family.

Ok, I hate to write a negative reivew, but I just did not enjoy this story at all. None of the characters seemed real to me, at all. And none of them had any warmth. The only one that I even marginally liked was, Phillip, the neglected brother, but that's only because I felt sorry for him. The mother and the two older sisters were completely self-involved and I thought that the youngest one, Amelia, could have and should have stayed true to herself in enjoying school and not getting caught up in the world of fame. And none of it seemed realistic to me. I mean, I'm sure that underage models do drink at parties and events, but I don't think that fourteen year olds parade around drinking without any kind of adult supervision. I just can't see it. I was really hoping to like this story, but it just fell really short for me.