What My Sister Remembered - Hardcover

Marilyn Sachs lives in San Francisco, California.

Grade 4-6 --Warm, loving, and working class, Molly's adoptive family suits her. Beth, her older sister, lives across the continent with a distant, wealthy family, and the sisters haven't met in eight years, since their parents' death. This brief novel takes place at their reunion, in Molly's New York apartment, in the span of a little more than 24 hours, and is told in easy contemporary dialogue. In the process, Molly, her mother, and father are revealed with clarity, although other characters are less complete. The visit becomes a screen upon which the sisters' pasts are cast. Beth is alternately angry and loving, while Molly experiences inexplicable feelings of fear. At an impromptu party planned by Molly's eager-to-please mother (who is also the girls' biological aunt), emotions and memory collide. Beth accuses her aunt of abandoning her, and Molly at last recollects the accident in which her parents died. Finally, readers see that healing begins at last, and they may be exhausted from witnessing the entire spectrum of human emotion in the final three chapters. In an admirable effort, Sachs has assayed a psychological suspense story. However, because there is negligible foreshadowing of Molly's recollection, and no clues at all to her mother's revelations, the effort is weak, and the result is melodrama. Although the book is flawed, young readers may enjoy the fairy-tale feeling of the contrast in the sisters' circumstances and the roller-coaster ride to the resolution. --Carolyn Noah, Central Mass. Regional Lib . System, Worcester, MA
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.