“Three Girls and Their Brother,” by Theresa Rebeck, 352 pages, a satire, one Amazon reviewer gave it only 2 stars, but recommended it as a book hard to put down. Entertainment Weekly: “a fizzy satire of celeb-obsessed NYC about flame-haired teenage sisters who get photographed for The New Yorker and soon become megastars." A 2009 Alex Award winner.
If you've read this book, please leave a comment about it and whether you think it would be of interest to a wide audience of 30,000 university readers.
3 comments:
I read this book very quickly over some recent time off work. Frankly, I was dismissive initially because of the cover art and three comments about the book (also on the cover) came from People, Vogue, and Entertainment Weekly.
Somewhere in the middle of the book, after I was completely sucked in, I realized that there were some significant social and family issues embedded in the story, and began to not only draw the easy parallels between it and our media- and celebrity-crazed culture in the US, but also began to think about my own experience with being a young adult, my siblings, my parents, and how that impacted me later in life.
So don't write it off like I almost did because the content seems too light - although it's an easy read, it's something I feel would appeal to many students on campus, and with appropriate facilitation, could lead to some interesting insights.
Think Catcher in the Rye meets Project Runway. This is another in the currently very popular trend of writing novels with multiple narrator formats. Here we hear from each of four siblings in turn, as we trace what sudden super celebrity for three gorgeous teen-age redheaded sisters does to them and their already dysfunctional family.
I thought the dialogue was a tad too precious at first, but the story is compelling, and you come to care about the characters and what is happening to them. Some very dark and troubling social issues are brought up, among them incest, pedophilia, and the less sensational but devastating in its impact practice of poor parenting by the selfish and self-absorbed. Personally, the more I read this book the more I liked it. Given its heavy focus on the world of modeling, its constant discussion of make up and fashion looks, I sincerely doubt many males will read much beyond the first few pages (especially when there are no pictures of these fabulous girls). I think a women's reading group would find a lot to fruitfully discuss after reading this book, but I suspect that for a mixed group, even if the reading was assigned, a lot of the males wouldn't complete it.
fun book, but superficial and not at all what i think we're looking for. almost "gossip girl" like in its content and writing.
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