Book Review: A Sister’s Story by Donatella Di Pietrantonio (translated by Ann Goldstein)

My Rating:

3.5⭐

“Adriana knew how to bring me back, to all that I had wanted to leave.”

In Donatella Di Pietrantonio’s A Sister’s Story we revisit our unnamed protagonist her younger sister Adriana, from the author’s previous novel , A Girl Returned. Our narrator, once raised by relatives but returned to her birth parents at the age of thirteen has always felt like an outsider among her siblings and parents. Adriana, her sister, younger than her by three years was the only person to whom she was close and who was protective of her. Our narrator has strived and has been successful in charting a path for herself that enabled her to break away from her working-class upbringing. As the story begins she is now teaching literature at a university in Grenoble. She is interrupted by a phone call in the middle of a class and immediately decides to travel back home to the coastal city of Pescara in the Abruzzo region of Italy, where Adriana is now fighting for her life after being seriously injured after falling from the terrace of her home in Borgo Sud, the fisherman’s village where she was living with her sixteen year old son.

“As children we were inseparable, then we had learned to lose each other.”

The narrator, once married (now divorced) to a dentist belonging to an influential family at the age of twenty-five, recalls an incident that occurred three years into her marriage , when her frantic sister arrived at her doorstep late in the night with her infant son. Running from debtors who were owed money by Rafael, a fisherman with whom Adriana had been romantically involved with since she was fifteen, she turned to her sister and her husband for help for herself and her nine-month-old son Vincenzo who she has named after their deceased older brother.

“Adriana is an opportunist by instinct, not by calculation. She makes use of those who can be useful to her, preserving a kind of innocence, a childlike candor. She understands that you can use her in the same way.”

A Sister’s Story by Donatella Di Pietrantonio is a short but intense novel that revolves around the complicated, dysfunctional but unbreakable bond between sisters – two individuals who could not be more different but who find shelter, solace and comfort with each other in their darkest moments. In the course of her journey, through the narrator’s memories, we get to know more about the significant events that have marked the lives of the two sisters and how their relationship has evolved through the years – their childhood marked by abuse and neglect, their attempts to escape their life of economic hardship and their dysfunctional family, their shared grief, their respective relationships and the loss and heartbreaks they face, their long gaps with no contact and their dependence on each other in their moments of need. In Adriana and her sister, the author creates two distinctive personalities- Adriana and our narrator are both strong willful women who have faced life’s challenges with grit and determination. As with their personalities, their life trajectories are in stark contrast. However, despite their differences what remains intact is their will to survive and the bond they share.

“With my sister I shared a legacy of words not said, gestures omitted, care denied. And rare, unexpected kindnesses. We were daughters of no mother. We are still, as always, two girls who ran away from home.”

I am glad that the author continued the story of the two sisters. I loved that we got to know more about Adriana, who was such a compelling character in the previous novel. I did, however, feel that the narrative was a tad lacking in emotional depth as compared to A Girl Returned . I also found the non-linear narrative a bit confusing as the narrator’s memories jump between timelines abruptly. But despite its flaws, this is a beautifully written novel with superb characterizations.

I strongly recommend reading Donatella Di Pietrantonio’s A Girl Returned before reading this book as the backstory of the characters is necessary to fully appreciate the significance of the events described in this novel.