“‘Things feel hard now, but it will pass. Everything passes, and something new comes along to fill the space … You can’t go around holding the worst thing you ever did in your hand, staring at it. You gotta cook supper, put gas in the car. You gotta plant more zinnias'” – Joshilyn Jackson, The Almost Sisters
I have never been to the South (unless you count Florida, and I’m pretty sure Southerners don’t) but I have always loved stories set there. Like in Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe or The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, the South feels more like a character than a setting in Jackson’s novel; it’s hard to imagine the events unfolding as they do anyplace else. The Almost Sisters takes place mainly in the tiny town of Birchville, Alabama – named after the Birch family. The last remaining Birch in Birchville is Leia’s beloved grandmother. When the novel opens, Leia is confronted with several family crises all at once: she finds out she is pregnant and the father is an anonymous Batman she slept with after a drunken encounter at a Comicon, her step-sister Rachel’s marriage has just fallen apart, and then she gets the call to go to Alabama to look after her grandmother, Birchie. Birchie has been hiding her progressing dementia from Leia and it has just outed itself in a very public – and scandalous – way at the local Baptist church’s Summer Fish Fry.
This book is contemporary fiction and I want to say it would make a great summer read, but not in a way that implies it is a marshmallow book by any means. Leia’s return to Birchville unearths family secrets and explores family dynamics in ways that keep the plot moving. It is alternately funny and moving by turns. One of the most poignant moments is when Leia comes face-to-face with the racism that she equates with what she calls ‘the Second South’ – one that white Southerners are aware of, but can never truly experience. Leia’s unborn child is biracial and she has to come to terms with the idea that he could never grow up in Birchville the same way she did as a child because his skin colour would make it impossible.
There are several plot lines that weave together in this novel. Birchie and her best friend Wattie are fighting to maintain their independence, Rachel is trying to pick up the pieces after her husband betrays her and Leia is trying to construct a future for her baby while meeting the deadline for the comic book she has been commissioned to write. Through these women, Jackson is exploring how we create families and how those families shape our own identities, but she does it in a way that is really accessible and keeps you turning the pages. The novel isn’t heavy-handed but Leia is a smart, interesting character and Jackson’s writing keeps the story from becoming sappy or sentimental.
If anyone has read gods in Alabama, another of Jackson’s novels, I would love to hear what you think. And if you are an audio book lover, Jackson is a former actor, and reads her novels herself on audio. I haven’t listened myself but I’ve heard she does a great job.
That wraps it up for this week. Until next time, happy reading!
Little Ms Word Smith 