My sister, my love is the story of the murder of six-year-old Bliss Rampike, told by her older brother Skyler Rampike. Despite the author’s note / disclaimer at the beginning of this sinister novel, the plot is entirely based on the murder of Jon-Benet-Ramsey. The author focuses on poor parenting, hunger for fame and fortune, social escalation, and all that goes with it.
Poor parenting is shown in the fact that the father pushes his son to such a degree that Skyler is seriously injured and, for his mother, his limp becomes something to be ashamed of. Poor parenting also shows that it pushes young Bliss to such extremes that the boy feels that if he does not perform well, he will not be loved.
At first, Skyler Rampike feels like she is the apple of her mother Betsey’s eye, Mom’s little man, before her little sister starts ice skating. Skyler’s sister Edna Louise instantly becomes a star and Skyler loses her position to Mummy, the frustrated wife and social climber. Dad is Bix Rampike, the CEO, separated from his family. As soon as Edna Louise Rampike starts to shine on the ice, her name is officially changed to Bliss Rampike for star attraction. Since Bliss the prodigy attracts media attention, Betsey and Bix rise to higher social status when they are accepted into a snooty country club.
When Bliss is killed in the exact same way as Jon-Benet and found in the boiler room of the house, Skyler deeply and sincerely laments for her sister, but because of being drugged by the doctors her mother’s chosen for her other evils, he does not remember what happened that night and believes his mother’s lies that he may be the culprit. The family is deeply traumatized by this murder, and the parents hide this alleged murder-child’s play from the police for the well-being of Skyler, their only son left alive. At the end of the book, Skyler finds out who actually killed Bliss, and it’s not him.
Although the story of the book is a later story and the reader’s knowledge of the Jon-Benet case is there, the writer keeps the reader guessing until the end. This may be a clever tool to use in the writing craft, but in such a long and tedious book that offers so many possibilities, the reader is exasperated at the end and, truth be told, may not care who killed. who.
The story is told years later, when Skyler is nineteen years old, and her voice shines throughout the book as the guilt-torn child and monstrous, self-absorbed parents. Still, Skyler manages to survive bad parents, mental hospitals and boarding schools and eventually everything that happened to her. In the end, in the words of the author, “He forgave, not for Bliss, he could not forgive for Bliss but for himself, he forgave them …” and “ I hope I can do it“
The book’s pacing is the kind that only Oates can get away with, as it is choppy and jumps from one thing to another and vice versa, and it is generally difficult to tell if the voice belongs to Skyler the child or Skyler the adult. When I first heard the audio version of the book, this was impossible to tell apart. When I got the book I understood better as the author uses visual media like charts and graphs.
The author of the book, Joyce Carol Oates, has won many awards and has earned the respect and admiration of the writing world. Some of her other books are: The Gravedigger’s Daughter, Black Girl / White Girl, Missing Mom, The Falls, The Tattooed Girl, I’ll Take You There, Blonde, We Were the Mulvaneys, What I Lived For, Foxfire, Bellefleur , Solstice, a garden of earthly delights and expensive people.
My sister, my love It is on 576 hardcover pages with ISBN-10: 0061547484 and ISBN-13: 978-0061547485.
Joyce Carol Oates is one of my favorite authors because she can do so much with misfortune and wickedness; however, this book is too long and complicated. Although you can appreciate the work and craftsmanship that went into it, the story, with the exception of Skyler’s character, was not interesting to me.