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“Blue Sisters: A Novel,” by Coco Mellors, is the story of three women in the Blue family. The sisters are very different from one another. Avery, the oldest, is in recovery from alcohol and heroin. She’s an addict turned straitlaced lawyer who lives in London with her wife. Avery was born wise, but is world-weary. She hates authority but loves structure. She has a photographic memory. In high school, Avery broke into the school’s records and memorized her entire grade’s Social Security numbers.
Bonnie, two years younger that Avery, is a former boxes who works as a bouncer in Los Angeles. Bonnie is soft-spoken and strong-willed. Her language is the language of the body. By age 6, she could walk on her hands and at 10 she was juggling 5 tangerines at a time. At 15, her father bought her a pair of boxing clogs and Bonnie found her true calling. She worships the alter of discipline. After silently watching her sister decline during adolescence, Bonnie vowed to never touch a drop of alcohol.
Lucky, the youngest sister, models in Paris while trying to outrun the consequences of her hard-partying ways. Lucky is a tall woman of great beauty. She became a model at age 14 and has worked all over the world, which is another way of saying she has been lonely all over the world.
Nicky, the fourth daughter in the Blue family, died at the age of 27. Nicky was a sensitive girly-girl, loved by both boys and girls. She possessed a carnival of feelings that she never tried to hide. Nicky suffered from endometriosis that the doctors couldn’t seem to help her with. Her family didn’t really understand the disease—they just knew she was in a lot of pain.
The story begins a year after Nicky dies unexpectedly, with Avery, Bonnie and Lucky reeling from the shock. They know they must return to New York to stop the sale of the apartment where they were raised. But the emotional implications of going home, make going home never as easy as it seems.
All three of the sisters are lost, each in their own way. But what they don’t realize is that “As long as you are alive, it is never too late to be found.”
I really enjoyed “Blue Sisters.” The novel is painfully honest regarding the impact the sisters feel with Nicky passes. Readers will feel the sisters’ pain and their happiness throughout the book, and be empathetic about their struggles with letting go when tragedy strikes.
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