The Sisters

“Well, you can tell everyone, Evelyn said, while getting up on her feet and switching to English, that we are special because we have an ultra-strong curse placed on us, saying that everything we love will get taken from us, and despite that curse, we are still here!”

Evelyn’s declaration to Jonas is the first explicit mention of the family curse, a central motif representing inherited trauma. She delivers these words with defiance, framing the curse as a source of unique identity and resilience. This moment crystallizes the family’s history of misfortune into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“I want to remember a bang, I want to remember the sound of shattered glass, broken branches, mushed metal. But all I remember is silence. A compact silence. A silence of shame. A silence of: How could we think that we were better than we were? A silence of: Let’s not try again ever.”

Jonas’s reflection on the Jas 39 Gripen crash emphasizes psychological impact over physical chaos. The repetition of “I want to remember” highlights the unreliability of traumatic memory, while the anaphoric repetition of “a silence” captures a sense of collective national failure. This event is a turning point in his childhood and friendship with Evelyn.

“Anastasia: no smoking, not in the apartment, not on the balcony, it’s not allowed according to the rules of the association, please respect this, and Evelyn: no one-night stands, please, not in my bed, not in the bathroom, not on the couch, not on the balcony, especially if I have an upcoming exam, I don’t want this to be like last time, I don’t want to find random guys’ pubic hairs in my bathroom, I don’t want to discover used condoms in the bathroom bin, okay?”

This single-sentence monologue uses tone to comically establishes Ina’s character as the overbearing eldest sister. Her frantic attempt to impose order on her siblings reveals a deep-seated anxiety and need for control, which are direct responses to their unstable, chaotic upbringing. The torrent of rules demonstrates how she copes with inherited trauma by micromanaging her immediate environment.

“Now we just need a password, I said. 

What password? 

Just invent one, I said. 

Evelyn, he said. 

Evelyn? I said. 

Evelyn, he said. 

Like Evelyn Mikkola? 

It’s just a name, he said. A password. 

Is it true that you and their mom were in love in Tunisia? I said.”

This exchange between Jonas and his father is a moment of significant foreshadowing. His father’s choice of “Evelyn” as a password, followed by his evasive answers, hints at a deep, unspoken history connecting him and Jonas to the Mikkola family.

“You will see, he said. Your sons will become drug users and failures without me. When Mom finally closed the door I thought about the Mikkola sisters and that this was another kind of curse, and now we were heading over there to see him.”

Here, Jonas’s father articulates a paternal curse that directly parallels the maternal curse haunting the Mikkola sisters. This moment drives resonance between the novel’s two central families through the theme of Breaking Cycles of Intergenerational Trauma. Jonas’s immediate recognition of his father’s words as “another kind of curse” demonstrates his early, painful awareness of these destructive, self-fulfilling family narratives.

“We moved around our entire childhood. 

Yes? 

Every time we settled somewhere, made friends, found a basketball team, you uprooted us and forced us to move on. 

Yes? 

That doesn’t provide security, does it? 

But Ina…Selima smiled. I gave you the security that you would always manage. Regardless of the circumstances. Regardless of the idiots surrounding you.”

During a tense lunch, Selima redefines her parental neglect as a gift of resilience, demonstrating the manipulative power of storytelling. By reframing the instability she created as a lesson in self-sufficiency, she attempts to absolve herself of responsibility, deepening her characterization as an absent maternal figure.

“And all the while Mom was there, without her voice I would have been lost. Dad’s voice pointed out my faults, but Mom’s voice claimed that anything was possible.”

This passage contrasts the impact of each of Jonas’s parents on his psyche. His father’s voice is a source of internalized criticism and self-doubt, showing intergenerational trauma. His mother’s voice, however, represents hope and possibility, serving as the important counternarrative that prevents him from being consumed by self-hatred.

“[O]n some level, I was so hurt that she left me in Stockholm that I looked forward to hurting her in the same way in Paris, but none of this would happen if she never came home.”

This quote reveals the narrator’s deeply ingrained pattern of lashing out due to feelings of abandonment. His plan to hurt Emma in Paris is a calculated, defensive act of retribution, demonstrating how his fear of being left behind transforms into a preemptive desire to inflict the same pain on others. This drives greater resonance between himself and the self-sabotaging Mikkola sisters, particularly Evelyn.

“As soon as Anders left, she could relax, there was something about being around other people that created a pressure inside her, she needed to be prepared, ready to crack a joke, tell a story, be liked, and when people appreciated her, she despised them for being so easy to manipulate, and if people didn’t like her, she despised herself for being so acutely aware of others’ disapproval.”

This passage reveals the immense psychological pressure behind Evelyn’s charismatic persona. Her paradoxical logic, where she despises those she charms and despises herself when she fails to charm them, exposes a deep internal conflict and sense of alienation. It highlights the exhausting performance of constantly managing others’ perceptions, showing that her social grace comes at a significant personal cost.

“Still Said’s words did something to her, he was the dad she never had, or rather: The dad who would have fit her better, there was something about his perspective, his tone, his author photo, his last name, something about the knowledge that he too had been displaced, he too had started in one country, and lost another country, or rather: He too had a country of his dreams that he on some level knew he would never be able to revisit because it only existed in the past (or maybe not even in the past).”

Ina projects onto Edward Said the ideal paternal figure she never had, seeing him as a model for navigating a hybrid identity. By integrating a historical figure into the narrative, Khemiri drives the verisimilitude of the Mikkolas’ story, rooting them in a specific place and time.

“Listen, I said. You’re going home. And I’m going to Jendouba. And I’m going to find the person who cursed you. And I’m going to make them take back the curse. Okay? Do you promise? she said. I promise, I said. That was the only way I could get her out of my car.”

Jonas’s father recounts his manipulative use of storytelling to control a desperate Anastasia. He placates her by promising to find the source of the family curse, a narrative he personally dismisses as unreal. This interaction demonstrates his calculated pragmatism and his willingness to use falsehoods to manage difficult situations.

“[S]he remembered one of the last days with Daniela, when they sat at the café in Sidi Bou Saïd, each with a mint tea with cacahuètes, it was just as quiet as it was now, the crickets had stopped singing, the wind had calmed, the waves of the sea held their breath, and Daniela leaned forward and said: I love you, and Anastasia couldn’t answer, not because she didn’t know what she felt, but because she was terrified of saying it and facing the consequences, so instead, she smiled and gently touched Daniela’s cheek and looked out over the sea and now it had been seventeen years since that summer, and Anastasia still wondered what would have happened if she had answered what she felt.”

Reflecting on a key moment with Daniela, Anastasia reveals how the family curse impacts her most significant relationships. Her inability to reciprocate love stems from a deep-seated fear of loss. This flashback shows the self-sabotaging power of inherited trauma, where fear prevents connection and creates lasting regret.

“Their mother’s sister, Dad said. Selima. 

Wait, wasn’t their mother called Selima? 

Well, Dad said. She wasn’t called Selima until she stole her sister’s passport and used it to flee to Europe.”

This revelation is an important plot twist, reframing the family’s entire history and the origin of their trauma. The curse is revealed as the consequence of a tangible act of betrayal and identity theft. This dialogue exposes the foundational lie upon which the Mikkola sisters’ lives have been built, suggesting that Selima has been struggling with her own sense of identity as much as her daughters have.

“Hector stood up from his chair and uttered a sentence that changed his future: If you don’t get fired for this, I will resign.”

This declarative statement is a definitive turning point in Hector’s character arc, where he sacrifices his professional security for his moral principles. The concise, dramatic sentence structure emphasizes the weight of his decision.

“It’s not kindness, Evelyn said. It’s something else masked as kindness, something I can’t put my finger on. Maybe control.”

This quote illuminates the insidious nature of control in Evelyn’s relationship with Simon. The nuanced phrasing “something else masked as kindness” captures her confusion and inability to name the emotional manipulation she experiences, foreshadowing the later reveal of abuse.

“Evelyn nodded and said she looked forward to helping, and when they said goodbye, she did her best not to reveal to anyone, not to Cecilia, not even to herself, that the sadness she felt was caused by her best friend’s happiness.”

The narration examines Evelyn’s internal state, revealing a core conflict between her loyalty to a friend and her own deep sense of stagnation. The contrast between her outward support and her secret sadness illustrates her deep-seated envy. This moment of quiet anguish serves as the primary motivation for her later decision to audition.

“When she finished, she made a little bow and probably expected Cecilia to applaud or at least look at her with the same impressed gaze that Evelyn had given her friend, but Cecilia just stared at her, smiled crookedly and asked if she wanted coffee or tea after dinner.”

This moment captures the turning point in Evelyn and Cecilia’s friendship. After impulsively performing a monologue, Evelyn expects praise, revealing a newfound passion for acting. Cecilia’s dismissive and subtly undermining reaction, however, hints at her jealousy and establishes the competitive dynamic that will come to define their relationship and ambitions.

“[A]nd then she spoke, and when she spoke, she didn’t sound like an actress, and she didn’t sound like herself, she sounded like the person she was always meant to become, her voice was deeper than usual, her voice seemed utterly uninterested in the audience’s approval, her voice sounded like it had all the time in the world, and Ina couldn’t look away.”

This passage captures Ina’s deep realization of Evelyn’s transformation. The description of Evelyn’s voice, which is timeless and uninterested in approval, highlights a newfound artistic maturity and integrity. This moment shatters Ina’s previous perceptions, replacing the image of her reckless younger sister with that of a confident, fully realized artist.

“Evelyn had seen it so many times that she had become immune to it, but now, seeing it at this gigantic size, in the place where it belonged, it moved her.”

This quote highlights the power of context and setting in shaping memory and emotion. The iconic family photograph, once a familiar and perhaps sterile image for Evelyn, becomes deeply moving when experienced in its historical setting. The moment emphasizes how physical space can reanimate personal history, transforming a distant family myth into a tangible, emotional reality.

“I hate you, I hate everything about you, absolutely everything, I hate how your appearance reminds me of my own aging body, how your voices sound like Mom’s, how your career ambitions make me feel like a failure, how every good thing that happens to you makes me jealous, I hate your children (Ina gasped), I hate that you work in advertising (Anastasia smiled), I hate that you’re always there for me, I hate that we always have each other, I hate our shared history, I hate our dead parents, I hate that you’re all I have, making it impossible for me to let you go and disappear, I hate Simon and Hector and Åhdal, I hate Stockholm, New York, and Borås.”

Evelyn’s monologue on the beach is a raw confession of her deepest resentments toward her sisters, revealing the complex web of love, jealousy, and obligation defining their relationship. This outburst is a desperate cry for release from her past and the suffocating roles she feels trapped in, but it’s also a test of the curse’s limits. Evelyn still loves her sisters and is seeing if she can risk losing them in a place where she feels fulfilled and free.

“[B]ut sometimes I wonder if the biggest difference between you and me is that you and Saskia are pink, and I am brown, and sometimes I wonder if you will ever understand what it was like to grow up in this fucking cunt country as a person with brown skin—you’ll never grasp the struggle to fit in, the struggle to do the right thing, the struggle to stand out—”

This internal monologue reveals the deep sense of alienation Ina feels, even with her closest friends. The blunt contrast between “pink” and “brown” emphasizes her perception of an unbridgeable racial and experiential divide. The stream-of-consciousness style of Ina’s thoughts emphasizes her long-suppressed frustrations, articulating the core conflict of navigating a dual identity within a predominantly white society.

“[H]e was occupied by an evil voice, echoing within him, he called it the Hyena, it was new, but it wasn’t new, it had been with him since childhood or at least since his parents’ divorce, since his father left the family, the Hyena hissed that there was something seriously wrong with him, it monitored his thoughts, behaviors, breathing, relentlessly criticizing him.”

Jonas’s confession to Evelyn personifies his inherited trauma as “the ‘Hyena.” This metaphor gives a concrete form to the abstract pain of his father’s emotional abuse and abandonment, illustrating how external criticism becomes a relentless internal monologue that defines his adult life.

“Mom. Listen carefully now. I don’t need to be rescued. Not now. Never again. Okay?”

Primo’s direct address to his mother is an important turning point in their relationship and in Ina’s identity. His declaration, “Never again,” forcefully rejects her role as a perpetual protector, a role that has defined her existence. This moment signifies his assertion of independence and forces Ina to reckon with the collapse of her carefully constructed family dynamic.