54 pages • 1-hour read
Between Sisters
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Themes
Complexities of Love in Various Forms
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of illness, death, mental illness, and death by suicide.
Via the main characters’ braided storylines, Between Sisters explores the complex nature of love. At the novel’s start, Meg, Claire, and Joe are all living separate lives defined by loneliness. Meg is an elite lawyer, living alone in an expensive condo in Seattle; her vocational successes feel empty without a defined social sphere or solid partnership. Claire is raising her daughter as a single mom; she hasn’t had a romantic relationship since she got pregnant, and she hasn’t had a solid relationship with Meg since they were children. While she does have Sam, Ali, and her friends, she longs for a loving partnership and a renewed connection with her sister. Meanwhile, Joe is wandering on foot from place to place, heartbroken in the wake of his wife’s death; he’s mourning Diana and disconnected from his family and community. The characters are all weighed by their alienation; their lives thus feel void of companionship. Their circumstances at the novel’s start show how their lives feel lacking in joy because they don’t have loving communal, romantic, or familial connections to share in it.
As Meg’s, Claire’s, and Joe’s worlds merge, they begin to learn the challenges and joys of solid, loving relationships. For Meg, this happens in the context of her connections with Claire, Ali, and Joe. Reuniting with her sister teaches her that she and Claire can rekindle their childhood bond in the present; together, the sisters learn that love requires sacrifice and vulnerability. Meanwhile, Claire discovers new forms of love in her relationship with Meg and Bobby Jack Austin: “This love [is] a gift she’[s] been given, one she’d stopped looking for and almost stopped believing in” (127). Although she’s afraid that Meg and Bobby might disappoint her, she decides that she won’t “turn away from [love] because she [is] afraid. One thing motherhood [has] taught her—love require[s] boldness” (127). These lessons apply to Joe’s quest for love, too. For Joe, loving again means returning to his hometown, reconnecting with his sister, Gina, and opening his heart to Meg. While fear “c[omes] with the package” (127), Joe ultimately learns that he can’t let fear rule his heart.
The characters’ network of intimate relationships conveys how powerful and unexpected love can be. Neither Meg, Claire, nor Joe anticipates the bonds they form with each other and others, but these connections lead them toward healing and renewal. In particular, their love for each other helps them survive Claire’s cancer diagnosis—shouldering each other’s sorrow and celebrating life’s beauty amidst it. The novel, therefore, shows that love isn’t limited to romantic love. It comes in many forms, all of which can transform the individual.
Personal Growth via Facing the Past
Meg’s, Claire’s, and Joe’s individual and intersecting personal growth journeys convey the importance of confronting the past to live a fuller life in the present. At the start of the novel, all three of the main characters are trapped by their past experiences and lives. Meg is hung up on what she and Claire suffered together. She still blames her mother for abandoning them, but worse, she still blames herself for abandoning Claire. Despite her psychological and emotional frustrations, Meg is convinced that talking about her “painful choice and the lonely years that […] followed it [won’t] help. Her past [isn’t] a collection of memories to be worked through; it [is] like an oversize Samsonite with a bum wheel” (7-8). This metaphor captures the unwieldy nature of Meg’s past. She shies away from facing these traumatic memories because she’s too afraid of what she might discover about herself in the process. Claire and Joe have similarly fraught relationships with their pasts. Claire has convinced herself that she’s moved beyond Mama’s and Meg’s abandonment, but her emotional unrest in the present suggests otherwise. By way of contrast, Joe is willfully clinging to the past, particularly as it relates to his relationship with his late wife. Joe is terrified of letting go of the past because he doesn’t know how to live on his own or face life, considering his role in Diana’s death. The past, therefore, is a trap that threatens to limit the main characters’ lives in the present.
Until Meg, Claire, and Joe acknowledge how the past is holding them back, they can’t heal from it and grow beyond it. For Meg, this means facing her and Claire’s fraught relationship and actively trying to heal from it. Her journey back to Hayden and her voluntary involvement in Claire’s wedding exemplify her work to change. She also learns how to be vulnerable during this period. Once she opens up to Claire about what happened between them and how she felt during this era, she gains perspective on her own experience and invites Claire into her private emotions. Mending her relationship with Claire in turn helps her to form healthy relationships with Ali, Sam, and Joe, too; this dynamic captures how facing the past heals the individual’s heart and creates opportunities for new life. Claire also grows once she acknowledges her lingering childhood hurt. She’s convinced herself that those “wound[s] [have] healed over, grown a layer of thicker skin” (136), but once Meg is back in her orbit, she realizes she has to confront her sister about the pain she caused her. Doing so helps her claim her own experience. Meanwhile, Joe’s personal growth happens when he starts to let go of Diana. The images of him packing Diana’s photos and clothing illustrate his work to let go of the past and embrace life in the present. While the past has a powerful hold on the human psyche, the novel conveys that because Claire, Meg, and Joe are brave enough to face it, they can each live a freer life.
Pursuit of Forgiveness and Reconciliation
Between Sisters uses the three main characters’ intersecting storylines to explore the possibilities of forgiving oneself and reconciling with loved ones. Just as Meg, Claire, and Joe are all seeking distinct forms of love and are traversing distinct personal growth journeys, they are all seeking forgiveness and reconciliation in unique ways. Meg must forgive herself for leaving Claire years prior if she hopes to reconcile with Claire. Claire must admit that Meg’s past actions and present coldness impact her emotionally if she wants to reconcile with Meg. Joe must forgive himself for assisting in Diana’s death by suicide (a request she made of him) so that he can reconcile with Diana’s parents and his solo life in the wake of Diana’s death.
All three of the main characters live with guilt and regret that keep them from making amends for their mistakes. For them to rebuild their lives and relationships in the present, they must show themselves grace. The way that Joe thinks about these internal challenges in Chapter 21 provides insight into all three characters’ experiences:
If he let go of the guilt—not all of it, of course, but just enough to reach for a different life, a different woman—would he lose the memories, too? Had Diana become so intertwined with his regret that he could have both or neither? And if so, could he really make a life that was separate from the woman he’d loved for so much of his life? He didn’t know. But […] he wanted to try (272).
The series of questions Joe asks himself enacts his active work to make sense of his heart and mind. He poses these questions because he is seeking forgiveness and reconciliation—neither of which he’s sure he can achieve but both of which he needs. The same notions apply to Meg and Claire. For Meg in particular, her guilt over Claire has come to define her identity; letting this guilt go would mean losing a part of herself. At the same time, when the sisters forgive themselves for how they’ve hurt each other, they create space for healthier, more fulfilling relationships.
The repeated images of the characters sharing space in the novel’s latter half convey their successful work to forgive and reconcile with each other. They gather around Claire’s bedside, race to each other’s homes, hold each other on the couch, and attend each other’s events. Such imagery evokes notions of care, comfort, and acceptance. Meg, Claire, and Joe ultimately learn to make peace with their past mistakes so they can welcome a new era of love into their lives, toward themselves and shared with others.
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