The horror genre is one that I only recently became fascinated with. When I say horror, I don’t mean the whole jump scares and blood things (though sometimes that is okay), but I do mean the warping of normal, the psychological thriller, the dark books that leave you feeling a little bit cold, a little bit hollow, a little bit trying to figure out how someone could imagine something like the book you’ve just read.
Sisters by Daisy Johnson is one of those books. It is blissfully short and sharp. I haven’t read Johnson’s novel that was nominated for the Booker Prize, making her the youngest nominee ever, but this made me want to read Everything Under.
The book follows sisters, July and September, born just 10 months apart. The younger of the two, July, is our narrator, though their mother Sheela has her own parts.
”My sister is a black hole.
My sister is a tornado.
My sister is the end of the line my sister is the locked door
my sister is a shot in the dark.
My sister is waiting for me.
My sister is a falling tree.
My sister is a bricked-up window.
My sister is a wishbone my sister is the night train
my sister is the last packet of crisps my sister
is a long lie-in.
My sister is a forest on fire,
My sister is a sinking ship.
My sister is the last house on the street.”
This quote is essentially what starts the book. It is chilling. The sisters and their mother are moving into a family beach house following some incident that occurred in Oxford. The incident is revealed later on in the book but I won’t spoil it for you. The complexity of the sister dynamic is thrilling. July, subservient and ever the peace keeper, submits to the often casually cruel September. Their relationship with their mother and their peers is interesting too as it sometimes feels like the two girls exist in their own universe, apart from anyone else. The encroaching darkness feels more and more sinister the longer the book goes on and the plot twist is unmooring to say the least.
Definitely my favorite read of the year thus far. Also, this cover art is great, it really brilliantly conveys the fragmentation of self into which July herself descends throughout the novel.
