The Brown Sisters, 1975
[Nicholas Nixon]
I married into a family of four daughters, which may explain my soft spot for four-sister novels. Also, I learned one of my writing mantras from a sister novel—The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montes O'Brien (Oscar Hijuelos, 1993). I came to novel writing from short stories, which tend to have a minimum of characters; often I found myself stymied by not knowing what came next. Working on novels, I discovered The Hijuelos Revelation: If you’re stuck, write about a different sister.
But one teensy problem remains: If you’re the partner of a woman with three sisters, and you happen to write a book about a family with four daughters, you face a vexing difficulty: explaining to your sisters-in-law (plus your partner) that the women in your novel are strictly products of your imagination; the notion that they’re modeled on them couldn’t be farther from the truth.1
SIXTEEN FOUR-SISTERS BOOKS:
The Alternatives, Caoilinn Hughes (2024)2
Hello Beautiful, Ann Napolitano (2023)3
The Almost Legendary Morris Sisters: A True Story of Family Fiction, Julie Klam (2021)4
The Most Fun We Ever Had, Claire Lombardo (2019)5
The Wildling Sisters, Eve Chase (2017)6
Nicholas Nixon, The Brown Sisters, Forty Years (2014)7
Four Queens: The Provencal Sisters Who Ruled Europe [nonfiction], Nancy Goldstone (2007)8
Sisters, Danielle Steel (2007)9
The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver (1998)10
The Falling Boy, David Long (1997)11
Fall On Your Knees, Ann-Marie MacDonald (1996)12
In the Time of the Butterflies, Julia Alvarez (1994)13
The Moonflower Vine, Jetta Carleton (1962)14
The Makioka Sisters, Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (1946-1948)15
The Romance of a Shop, Amy Levy (1888)16
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott (1868)17
Good luck with that!
Hughes: THE FLATTERY SISTERS: Olwen, Maeve, Nell, Rhona.
This one’s brand new and seems to be getting good ink.
https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Alternatives.html?id=3ZfLEAAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_descriptionhttps://bookmarks.reviews/reviews/the-alternatives/
Napolitano: THE PADVANO SISTERS: Julia, Sylvie, Cecilia, Emeline.
And even more ink for this one:
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • ONE OF THE CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY’S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, NPR, The Washington Post, Time, Vogue, Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, New York Post, She Reads, Bookreporter.
MORE THAN ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD!
“Another tender tearjerker . . . Napolitano chronicles life’s highs and lows with aching precision.”—The Washington Post
An exquisite homage to Louisa May Alcott’s timeless classic, Little Women, Hello Beautiful is a profoundly moving portrait of what is possible when we choose to love someone not in spite of who they are, but because of it.
Klam: THE MORRIS SISTERS: Selma, Malvina, Marcella and Ruth.
As a student of genealogy and shows like Finding Your Roots, I love this book’s subtitle—The True Story of Family Fiction. Is the narrative passed down to you re: your tribe of forebears true? Or true-ish? Often the stories are true, I’ve found (though the fine points may have been worn away by repeated handling). But even if they’re not, their origins can be fascinating anyway. This is from NYT review:
Klam . . . tells us up front that 90 percent of the above is untrue. This in no way constitutes a spoiler: What powers this book is the chase, Klam’s relentless effort to excavate, verify and contextualize every fact and facet of the Morris sisters’ lives, from the Romanian village where three of them were born to what actually happened to their mother to the claim that Ruth, the youngest, was the true author of a popular 1940s musical.
That excavating can absorb the excavator utterly—it’s the rabbit hole of rabbit holes. The rush of discovery, the frustration of blockage! But I know another truth about this topic: What’s pertinent/revelatory/eye-opening to you often has a profound sedative effect on whoever’s nice enough to listen to you unfold it. The review of The Morris Sisters is not without quibbles, but, clearly, it kept the reviewer awake. Brava! I’m putting this one on my TBR list.
Lombardo: THE SORENSON SISTERS: Wendy, Violet, Liza, Grace.
Let’s be clear: We are not jealous. First novel, debuts on Bestseller List. Translated into a dozen languages. TV series in the works, written by her, produced by Laura Dern and Amy Adams. As one reader put it: Superbe saga familiale. L'écriture est très agréable, les personnages tous et immédiatement attachants dans leur variété et leur complexité. Drôle, émouvant, rythmé. Formidable.
Chase: THE WILDE SISTERS: Flora, Pam, Margot and Dot.
Eve Chase is the pen name of a British journalist, writer of mysteries. As the promo has it:
Four sisters. One summer. A lifetime of secrets.
And as if that weren’t enough, listen to the reader descriptions: enthralling, bewitching, gripping, spell-binding, atmospheric, haunting, heart-stopping, dazzling, page-turning, immersive, disturbing and delicious, filled with subtle intrigue, Chase is a modern Daphne Du Maurier . . . And so on.
Nixon: THE BROWN SISTERS: Bebe, Heather, Laurie, Mimi.
I’ve followed Nixon’s project for years. Here’s a piece from the New Yorker [it may open only for subscribers]. Also a link to the gallery that represents him:
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/looking-at-nicholas-nixons-forty-third-portrait-of-the-brown-sisters
https://fraenkelgallery.com/portfolios/nicholas-nixon-brown-sisters
Goldstone: THE FOUR DAUGHTERS OF THE COUNT OF PROVENCE AND BEATRICE OF SAVOY: Marguerite, Eleanor, Sanchia and Beatrice.
"On Goldstone's rich, beautifully woven tapestry, medieval Europe springs to vivid life. . . . This is a fresh, eminently enjoyable history that gives women their due as movers and shakers in tumultuous times." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
[Disclaimer: This is included under protest (“Don’t be an elitist!”—Significant Other).
Steele: THE ADAMS SISTERS: Candy (the supermodel), Tammy (the successful TV producer), Sabrina (the ambitious lawyer), Annie (the artist).
Kingsolver: THE PRICE SISTERS: Rachel, Leah, Adah, Ruth.
Is this where I have to come clean? Admit I’ve never read a single word of Kingsolver? Right. Maybe this is the one? If you’ve got a better idea, lemme know, OK?
Long: THE STAVROS SISTERS: Evangeline (Linny), Olivia, Celia, Helen. They and their father Nick own the Vagabond Cafe in Sperry, Montana. The falling boy is Mark Singer, husband of Olivia.
A debut novel, really good. Critics rave. Book-buying public largely unmoved by the adulation. A few books later, agent suggests writing under a different name.
MacDonald: THE PIPER SISTERS: Kathleen, Mercedes, Frances and Lily.
Canadian playwright, broadcaster, actress, and writer. This novel won the Commonwealth Writers Prize and was an Oprah Book. MacDonald was named an Officer of the Order of Canada for "her multi-faceted contributions to the arts in Canada and for her advocacy of LGBTQ+ and women's rights.”
Alvarez: THE MIRABEL SISTERS: Dede, Patria, Minerva, and Marie Teresa.
Set against the Trujillo regime in the Dominican Republic (Trujillo [el Jefe] was assassinated in 1961). The Mirabels were actual figures in the resistance movement (Alvarez’s father also took part). The novel was a National Endowment for the Arts Big Read book.
https://www.arts.gov/initiatives/nea-big-read/time-butterfliesCarleton: THE SOAMES SISTERS: Jessica, Leonie, Mary Jo and Mathy.
Found a copy of this at my wife’s family’s cabin adjacent to Lake Superior—over a lifetime of August weeks, I’ve worked my way through this wondrous miscellany (skipping the 20-odd Georgette Heyer novels once belonging to my esteemed mother-in-law): Nevil Shute, John D. MacDonald, John le Carré, Michael Crichton, Gene Stratton-Porter, and so on.
Now I find that this is at least the third time I’ve referenced it at the Substack. Must’ve stuck with me. Here’s a note on Carleton:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jetta_Carleton
Tanizaki: THE MAKIOKA SISTERS: Tsuruko, Sachiko, Taeko and Yukiko.
A major figure in modern Japanese lit. Shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Many film adaptations of his work. Here’s the note from Birth Year Project: 1961:
Among Tanizaki's other novels: Some Prefer Nettles (1929) and The Makioka Sisters (1943-1948). Along with Yusanari Kawabata [Snow Country, The Go Master, Beauty and Sadness] and Yukio Mishima [Confessions of a Mask), Tanizaki was one of the "Big Three" postwar Japanese novelists, until the emergence of Haruki Murakami.
Levy: THE LORIMER SISTERS: Gertrude, Lucy, Phyllis, Fanny.
Wiki: The novel centers on the Lorimer sisters, who decide to open their own photography business after the death of their father leaves them in poverty. The novel examines the opportunities and difficulties of urban life for the "New Woman" in the late nineteenth century, maintaining their right to independent opinion and the questioning of social norms.
Reading New Woman lit has given me a better handle on the waves of activity that made up the struggle for women’s social, legal, and economic liberation, and showed how groups with disparate philosophies found find common purpose—temperance activists, crusaders for children’s welfare, suffragists, pacificists, socialists, and various other reform-minded activists had the status of women at the center of their Venn Diagram.
Some links:
https://theliterarysisters.wordpress.com/2022/12/01/one-from-the-archive-reading-the-new-woman/ https://victorianweb.org/victorian/gender/diniejko1.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Woman
THE MARCH SISTERS: You can name them, right? Let’s start with the one who writes the novel, it’s . . . ? (Right, Jo, #2). So who’s the oldest? Did someone say Meg? Excellent! Only two to go! Doesn’t one of them die? Was it Becky? Philomena? Emma? Any of you bite on those imposters? No, you smarties know it’s the painfully shy Beth (scarlet fever). Just one left . . . the youngest, the artist—pale, slender, “a regular snow maiden”? Marries Laurie (on the rebound from Jo)? Oh, come on, it’s easy, just three letters . . .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Women
I loved Hello Beautiful but the logistics of the setting drove me nuts! I live in Chicago and the sisters’ neighborhood isn’t easy to get to from Evanston on public transportation the way they do effortlessly in the book lol
David, have you read The Makioka Sisters? It's gorgeous, each sister artfully drawn, the English translation is sensitive and elegant. I rarely invest the time to read any book more than once just for pleasure. This is one of my few exceptions.