"Why am I Crying in the Club rn?" - Book Edition
Helloooo lovelies. I’m here to say that Daisy Johnson is on full “x games mode” when it comes to her absolute masterpiece of a story. “The volume inside of this [book] is ASTRONOMICAL; it is way too loud in [it]” and I can quite easily declare that it is now my second favourite novel of all time. Pls read it. It’s only little (off the top of my head, it’s around 150 pages or so) but it is like literary quicksand.
Bruh I’m not even kidding when I say that I ordered this to collect from W H Smith’s, then went and bought the last copy on the shelf in Foyles the day it was released, and went to cancel my order from Smith’s because I had finished it by the time it had arrived. This is a Real One, I swear – which is why I’m telling you to go and read it on here.
I don’t think I’ve ever done Book Reviews on my blog before. I’m not really a Reviewer. I’m more of a Reader-and-Digester-then-Move-On(er?). I never normally read formal reviews myself either, mainly because I like to decide for myself if something is good or bad. Saying that, I think most novels have good points and bad points; I don’t think any book is entirely awful, (except for The Lovely Bones; that is a Bad Book).
However, I’m making the exception today for Daisy Johnson’s Sisters because, wow, reading that was a couple of hours of a raw, lyrical culture shift for me. What a book. Full on firecracker shit. Wow. I finished it last night and I took it out to the pub garden with me because there was no way I was letting it go so soon. My poor flatmate had to listen to me rant and rave and over-gesticulate my theories so much I almost poked a lovely staff member in the eye (sorry Matt!)
(President) Daisy Johnson enters liminal, watery territory with a profoundly moving tale of an eerie mother-daughter bond which cuts deep with a blade of grief. It’s as eerie as it is absorbing and pulls you in with its distant lyricism, giving off these mythical vibes with a 21st century twist that grounds the impossible in a sensitive and steely reality.
The experience of reading Sisters is almost operatic but in the softest, most quiet and controlled of ways, as the family’s past, and the tragedy that is the book’s true narrative engine, are revealed in fragmentary, frightening glimpses. July and September are teenage sisters, as near to twins as two girls born 10 months apart can be. As we enter their tale, they are heading north – or so it appears – with their mother Sheela, driving from Oxford to Yorkshire, to a broken down house “beached up on the side of the North York Moors, only just out of the sea.” It’s called “Settle House” – probs the most Yorkshire name ever – and it’s anything but settling.
The toxicity of siblings deeply entangled in each other echoes across the pages of this absolute question mark (yep, no longer a book; it’s punctuation!) From September insisting that they celebrate both their birthdays on the day of her own birth to the truly disquieting intimacy of the pair (one?) sharing a phone, these girls are “isolated, uninterested, conjoined, young for their age, sometimes moved to great cruelty”.
I know that I joke a lot about me crying on here but, as a matter of fact, it’s actually really rare that it happens because I’m not a wimp, I’m hard af and mainly because I hate that burning knot you get in your chest and the stinging behind your eyes. I know crying is meant to be a healthy expression of emotion and shite but it’s hardly healthy how much of an ugly crier I am. When I say my eyes go ALIEN, I’m not kidding (when I quote “Whoa!”, Mills and Han know exactly what I’m talking about!) No one needs to see that mess – except poor “Whoa!” guy, apparently.
But this book got me. I closed it, sat it on the kitchen counter, and did one of those whimsical glances-out-the-window ft a Lauryn Conrad-inspired ‘mascara tear.’ It was all very dramatic. Could hear violins playing in the background and everything if you listened hard enough as the flood gates opened.
But seriously, I wouldn’t post a book recommendation on here unless it was worth it and, trust me when I say, the elision concealed by the “almost” that underpins this hardback manages to be both a force of attraction and repulsion. Might be a good time to suggest that if you’re triggered by the themes of mental illness, grief, the maternal or domestic/sexual abuse, give Sisters a miss.
Folktale terror meets the Iphone in the pages of Johnson’s third novel. I read it and couldn’t help but think that Sisters is the baby of Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier and Stephen King’s The Shining. The eternal terror of intimate disgust and the fragility of the mind washes up on the pages of Johnson’s tale about the Yorkshire coastline, with an unwillingness to fix on what “the problem is” – and the unspoken lack of explanation is probably what makes the story so capturing yet alarming. Not knowing is just as, if not more, horrifying than revelation, when you think about it.
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