A Sister's Gift
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Reviews
St Just Thursday Evening Reading Group 3rd January 2019.
A sister's gift. Giselle Green.
Most of the reading group thought that this book was not great literature, but was entertaining, absorbing, and made the reader want to find out what happened next. It was more than a 'good sister/bad sister' story, we thought; and it avoided the clichéd surrogacy story of the mother changing her mind and refusing to give up the baby. The characters were well drawn, and the matter of the sisters both facing a crisis in their lives and then moving on was presented convincingly.
Negatives were (for some readers) that the bridge symbolism appeared too contrived, and (for all readers) that the balloon symbolism failed to convince. Again, some readers thought the book contained too many themes – the authorship of the PhD thesis, Hollie's house and whether to move out of it, Hollie's fear of water, the stabbing incident from her past, her issues with her mother, her discovery of her real father – all on top of the surrogacy story. Others thought that all this contributed to the story by explaining how badly Hollie was weighed down with dilemmas.
We talked about the issues raised by the book, including surrogate pregnancies and how they should be organised; relations between siblings and how siblings are often inexplicably different; and the character of Scarlett being morally ambiguous.
We looked at the 'reading group questions' at the end of the book, and attempted to answer some of them, but generally found these less useful than free discussion.
