Blue Sisters 2024

In a sentence, Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors is about extremely hot and successful women with some gnarly personal issues. That's right, you can have a beautiful house, a high-paying job, and an adoring wife yet still feel the need to steal an occasional ciggie behind the shed to relieve life's stresses. I missed the other important part of the plot, the three protagonists are all sisters. There was a fourth living sister up until her death a year ago, Nicky. 

Nicky died from an overdose, and everyone else in her immediate family has addiction issues too except, for her boxing sister Bonnie (who, according to the text, is addicted to pain anyway) and their enabling mother. 

Our story begins with these accomplished women coping with their grief on the anniversary of Nicky's death. The book is told through the three alternating perspectives of the sisters Nicky left behind. The eldest, Avery, is a successful lawyer living in London. Bonnie is a typical middle child who stays out of conflict and puts everything into world championship boxing. Last but certainly not least is Lucky, a model and addict who hasn't yet come to terms with the destruction she leaves in her wake. 

Like these three exceptional women, this book has some serious problems. That's not to say I didn't enjoy almost every second of it. Mellors' writing is wonderfully compelling, particularly the world-building. I found myself rooting for all the siblings, even when they were at odds. These sisters have something I can't relate to but desperately wish I could emulate: an unrelenting familial bond that takes up space in their lives.

So much space, in fact, that they seemingly have little time for other relationships, especially friends. This brings me to the first issue I had with the book, most people have friends. The narrative must have been crowded with too many voices to give each sister her social circle. 

Bonnie, for example, has fallen from grace and no longer competes as a boxer but works as a bouncer at an LA nightclub. She is the only one of the three to ostensibly have any friends. These so-called friends are also her coworkers. The closest friend is Peach, who ends up hitting on her later anyway. Avery has no friends. We only see her interacting with one or two characters other than her family. Lucky interlopes with others in the modelling industry but all her relationships are superficial by design. 

The most compelling writing in Blue Sisters lies in the interactions between the sisters. Mellors provides a real insight into the unique bond that sisters share. Could this not have been extended to a small collection of friends too? The sisters' biggest internal conflicts are addiction-related, marriage-related or related to their careers. But to my mind, these women seem extremely lonely. Particularly when I read the sections with Lucky, there was no levity or resolution. She spent the whole novel bouncing from person to person, or rather, party to party with no spark of genuine connection. 

The connections provided in the book in any real depth raise many questions. Avery and Bonnie both have problematic love interests. There's nothing wrong with presenting fraught relationships. Avery's relationship with her wife presents a complex dynamic, she's married to her former therapist. Yet, this isn't explored with any satisfying depth. It didn't sit right with me that a therapist would date and go on to marry their client. A relationship with your therapist is one built on trust and firm boundaries. In reality, therapists are trained to respectfully navigate when a client forms feelings for them. 

Has Mellors ever spoken to a therapist? I'm sure client-therapist relationships happen. It's nowhere near as taboo as student-teacher relationships. But it still negatively affected my view of Avery's wife, Chiti. I don't think my troubled past compares to Avery's history with addiction, but I would be horrified if my therapist made a move on me after knowing all of my darkest thoughts and actions. The text falls over itself to let us know that in her youth Avery was such a slave to substances that she repeatedly caught headlice. Therapists simply know too much.  How am I supposed to get behind a therapist like that? It's simply not going to happen. 

Bonnie is also infatuated with her boxing trainer, a Russian called Pavel who we don't learn much about. We learn that he is cold, a strict trainer, and loves to dance. He has also known Bonnie since she was 15. Once again, Mellors attempts to tackle a complicated dynamic without the required nuance. We are encouraged to root for this relationship to succeed. It made me feel a little off to be implicated in a relationship with a man who was clearly a father figure to a young Bonnie. I liked Bonnie the most of the three sisters, she's the most calm and level-headed character. She doesn't have Avery's controlling nature nor does she suffer from Lucky's aloofness and flakiness. Bonnie was the most likeable. I did root for her happiness but it pays to not think about it all too hard as it will soon start to unravel. 

Writers are under pressure to create compelling and realistic worlds. We all have our unique networks of people. This is what we spend a lot of free time thinking about. That or work. Here lies my other issue, the sisters have jobs but we hardly hear about them. Especially Avery's work life. We are told she's a lawyer only to hear scant details about her work. 

We learn that Nicky was a high school English teacher. She had the most conventional life of the four. Her career is only mentioned to emphasise her likability through her relationships with her students. 

Nicky is a core character who we only get to know through the perspectives of others. The story really shone when we learned more about the sisters' childhood with Nicky. Nicky is in some ways the most vulnerable of the four sisters. She suffers from chronic pain from endometriosis and is the most susceptible to concerning herself with the judgement of others. 

The sisters reunited after the impending sale of their childhood apartment, where Nicky lived before her passing. Their interactions strengthen the latter half of the book. Our characters find themselves back in New York, and the story flows as they all refind their feet. 

The ending revealed only little snatches of their lives in the future. Given that Mellors tackles the heady topic of addiction, it's unlikely that all three of the sisters would turn out alright. We aren't given satisfying insight into what a future as an addict could look like. Lucky may be in rehab, she also may be an internationally famous musician. We only receive hints towards what her future has shaped into. This is consistent with all three sisters but Lucky's life trajectory is the least satisfying. 

At its heart, Blue Sisters is a novel about being stuck and a novel about grief. It's about the existential dread that surfaces when we are forced to face up to the realities of the death of a loved one. Our work provides the ideal backdrop to extend that sense of dread. We would better see ourselves in their stories if the three women had more fleshed-out or even more relatable careers and social lives. Blue Sisters was a delightful read in its best moments but it suffers from being too crowded.