The Frederick Sisters Are Living the Dream: A Novel
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Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine meets Early Morning Riser with a dash of Where’d You Go, Bernadette in this very funny, occasionally romantic, and surprisingly moving novel about how one woman’s life is turned upside down when she becomes caregiver to her sister with special needs. Every family has its fault lines, and when Maggie gets a call from the ER in Maryland where her older sister lives, the cracks start to appear. Ginny, her sugar-loving and diabetic older sister with intellectual disabilities, has overdosed on strawberry Jell-O. Maggie knows Ginny really can’t live on her own, so she brings her sister and her occasionally vicious dog to live near her in upstate New York. Their other sister, Betsy, is against the idea but as a professional surfer, she is conveniently thousands of miles away. Thus, Maggie’s life as a caretaker begins. It will take all of her dark humor and patience, already spread thin after a separation, raising two boys, freelancing, and starting a dating life, to deal with Ginny’s diapers, sugar addiction, porn habit, and refusal to cooperate. Add two devoted but feuding immigrant aides and a soon-to-be ex-husband who just won’t go away, and you’ve got a story that will leave you laughing through your tears as you wonder who is actually taking care of whom.
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Thank you to Netgalley for providing an ARC copy of this novel.
The Frederick Sisters are Living the Dream isn't a book that I would normally reach for while out shopping or at the library. It's not fantasy, it's not a romance book, there's nothing really there that speaks to my favorite genres. But there was something about the cover, something about the description that made me request an ARC. I'm glad I did. The Frederick Sisters are Living the Dream is a story bout three sisters, their lives, and how much they care for one another.
The eldest sister, Betsy, is barely in the book - she's out living her life on the West coast away from the rest of her family. You're made to believe that she thinks she's better than her other two sisters, that she's got this fantastic life and as such has no time for her family. This isn't the case, you'll find out as you read. Betsy is very complex as a character.
The middle sister is Ginny, an adult with special needs, a learning disability, and severe diabetes. She's often difficult, hard to understand and cantankerous. Ginny is stubborn to a fault, and at some points, just plain mean. Her falling and getting sepsis is where the novel starts.
The youngest sister, and main character of the novel, is Maggie. Maggie is a woman whose sons are grown, who has just separated from her deadbeat husband that she cheated on, who is doing the absolute best she can to hold onto her life with all she can. She holds on too tightly, and cracks begin to appear.
It sounds like, from reading the acknowledgements at the end of the book, that Jeannie Zusy herself had a sibling with disabilities. While reading the book, you can definitely tell that Zusy knows exactly what her characters are going through. You can really feel Maggie's frustration and absolute love for her sisters warring with each other. Maggie tries so hard to control everything, to make everyone happy, to make sure everything goes right. But it's impossible for her to do, so by the middle-end of the book, she's going crazy.
The sisters, all three, do come to an understanding by the end of the book. They learn to live with each other's faults, to work around each other's quirks, and live. This book is heartwarming, but at the same time, incredibly, incredibly real.
Four and a half stars.
The Frederick Sisters are Living the Dream comes out September 20, 2022.
