The Sisters Antipodes
by Jane Alison
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jane AlisonEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-03-16
ISBN: 0151012806
Number of pages: 288
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Book Reviews of The Sisters Antipodes
Book Review: Very disappointing book that should have been mesmerizing
Summary: 3 Stars
I finished this book a couple of nights ago and was so disappointed that I immediately moved on to another book because I didn't want to think about this one any longer. I was SO disappointed in the way this book was written. For once, we have a REAL (and TRUE) STORY here, but the author is so self-obsessed that she couldn't/can't see beyond her own navel and therefore was almost unable to tell the story at all.
You know the details of this story, others have commented on it here: Her parents switched partners with another couple, both with two daughters. This author moved from her native Australia to the States with her mother and her mother's new American husband, while her father (also Australian) and his new wife (American) stayed in Australia with her two girls. She lost her father and her homeland which would be devastating to anyone. It is a very bizarre story which should have lent itself to an interesting book. Instead, we get a book from a woman who sees herself as a perpetual victim and even today, many years past the divorces, still can't speak up for herself.
Her parents were utterly selfish, as parents often are. They obviously did not do well by their children when chosing their marital partners. But time marches on and the adults settled into their new lives while the children grew up. The oldest girls from each family, as well as the two boys born after the new marriages, are not heard from here at all and one of the other girls cannot speak for herself, so what we are left with is the author of this book who is, unfortunately, not a story-teller, but a woman who has led her whole life until now making every person she comes into contact with pay for her unhappiness. She punishes all of them, innocent though they may be, as she cannot punish her parents, for some reason. So the victim lives on and destroys others as she felt she was destroyed.
In fact, the author is an intelligent, well-educated, engaging woman who has much to offer and it would appear that she is the only one who can't see that. She views herself through a prism she has created and perpetuated by sleeping with any and every man she can find (this punishes who?), eventually ruining her own marriage, and by doing drugs, and engaging in other self-destructive behaviors. It is very sad that she feels it necessary to make these poor choices when, in the parents' defense, they did not make any deliberate plan to harm her or their other children; they just followed their hearts which as we all know can lead to trouble.
A couple of years ago I read another book which also was a great true story: As a teenager Meredith Hall (the author of Without A Map: A Memoir) became pregnant and was made to leave her school, move away alone, and to give up her baby. Terrible! But she also perpetuated the myself-as-victim theory and spent the next many, many years wandering and sleeping around and doing drugs and almost dying. To what purpose? Have either of these women ever heard the phrase "moving on"? Have they never heard of forgiving the parents, as parents have been forgiving their children for eons?
I read a lot of memoirs because they can be so true emotionally as well as educational in a very humane way. I would love to meet the authors of most of those books because they have led lives I will never experience, but I don't think I would want to meet Jane Alison, the author of this book. What would I, or anyone, say to her? Nothing to say, except maybe ask about her other sisters and brothers to see how they are doing today; she is obviously not doig well emotionally, and would not be the type of person I would be drawn to. It would appear there is no one there, except a fragile victim who has done nothing to mend any fences or try to have some understanding of others.
Summary of The Sisters Antipodes
A gorgeous and deeply intimate memoir about families breaking apart
When Jane Alison was a child, her family met another that seemed like its mirror: a father in the Foreign Service, a beautiful mother, and two little girls, the younger two (one of them Jane) sharing a birthday. The families became inseparable almost instantly. Within months, however, affairs ignited between the adults, and before long the parents exchanged partners, then divorced, remarried, and moved on. Two pairs of girls were left in shock, a ?silent, numb shock, like a crack inside stone, not enough to split it but inside, silently fissuring? that would prove tragic.
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