The Sisters

The Mikkola sisters, Ina, Evelyn, and Anastasia, attend a New Year’s Eve party for the new millennium. The eldest, Ina, feels isolated when her sisters abandon her. She meets a man named Hector, who helps her search for them. Though Ina worries he will prefer her more outgoing sisters, Hector chooses to stay with her, and they kiss at midnight.

The narrative shifts to the first-person perspective of Jonas, a childhood acquaintance of the sisters. He recalls being five or six and overhearing his parents arguing. His mother was upset that his father had encouraged an old friend, the Mikkola mother, to move to their neighborhood of Drakenberg. The family did not move there at that time.

In January 2000, Anastasia is evicted from her art studio. The curator cites late rent and the chaos caused by her boyfriend, Mathias, who set off the building’s sprinklers with fireworks at the New Year’s party. Anastasia breaks up with Mathias and moves in with Ina.

Jonas recalls another memory from 1990, when he was eleven. His father takes him for a haircut and has it shaved against his wishes, mentioning that the youngest Mikkola sister, Anastasia, gets into trouble for looking like a boy. On their way home, his father confronts a man stealing newspapers.

In February, Evelyn is deeply bored with her job at a luxury clothing store. Ina visits with Hector, whom she introduces as her boyfriend. The seriousness of their relationship shocks and unnerves Evelyn. She resolves to quit her job but does not follow through.

Jonas recounts when the Mikkola sisters finally moved to Drakenberg in 1991. He describes the local rumors about their deceased father and their often-absent mother, Selima. Jonas, who is also half-Tunisian, learns that his father and Selima had a past relationship. Jonas’s mother warns him to stay away from the sisters.

In March, Evelyn’s landlord tells her he needs his apartment back. He briefly suggests they could share it, an offer she accepts to avoid moving in with her sisters, but he quickly changes his mind and gives her a move-out date.

Jonas remembers befriending the sisters, especially Evelyn. Their friendship is rekindled after a fight in which he repeats a rumor about her mother. Evelyn tells him about their family’s curse, which dictates that everything they love will be taken from them. She explains the ritual they must perform after receiving a compliment to ward off bad luck.

The three sisters pick up a dilapidated moving truck for Evelyn’s move. While driving, they bond by reminiscing about their mother’s red Toyota.

Jonas recalls the Jas 39 Gripen plane crash in August 1993. He and Evelyn secretly biked to Långholmen to watch the air show, disobeying Ina’s instructions. The plane crashes near them, and Evelyn believes the family curse is responsible. When Ina finds them, she is furious and forbids Jonas from seeing Evelyn again, ending their friendship.

Evelyn’s friends help her move into Ina’s apartment. Ina feels alienated by her sister’s large social circle but finds common ground with Anastasia in mocking Evelyn’s popularity. In May, with all three sisters living together, Ina imposes a strict cleaning schedule, which her younger sisters ridicule. Anastasia, unemployed, speaks with their mother, Selima, who has moved to a new town again.

Jonas recalls his father’s depression after the Mikkolas left their neighborhood. His father was scammed by Selima over a carpet and failed in his business ventures. Jonas befriends a new classmate, Radhika, who gives him an old computer.

Ina fears Hector is about to break up with her. While snooping, she finds photos of him with a former male lover. Hector catches her, and she leaves his apartment in shame. The sisters have dinner together, where Ina confronts Anastasia about rent before breaking down over her fears about Hector. Her sisters comfort her. Afterward, Evelyn secretly calls Hector to intervene, and Anastasia starts looking for a job. Hector and Ina reconcile. Anastasia’s old acquaintance, Dino, helps her get a job at a preschool.

In July, Ina joins Hector on his family’s vacation. She meets his overbearing mother, Ingrid, and quiet father, Enzo, a former political prisoner from Argentina who was detained for seven months in a prison known for its use of torture. Ina feels suffocated by the family’s constant togetherness. They decide to leave early, and on the drive back, Ina agrees to visit her own mother. At lunch, Selima is surprisingly charming and normal, though she offers only a superficial version of her life story and a partial apology for her absence as a mother.

At the end of 2000, the sisters are apart for the holidays. Evelyn works on Christmas Eve, and a man named Simon visits her at the store. They kiss, beginning a relationship, and Evelyn moves out of Ina’s apartment. Six months later, their mother is dead. Jonas recalls seeing the sisters at the 1999 New Year’s party but failing to speak with them.

In the summer of 2003, Anastasia travels to Tunisia for an Arabic language course and stays in Jonas’s father’s apartment. In a flashback to 2001, Ina and Hector attend a crowded lecture by Edward Said, where they see Evelyn and Simon. In Tunis, Anastasia meets and falls in love with Daniela, a German-Tunisian engineering student. She confides in Daniela about the family curse and her mother’s death in a car crash in 2001, recounting how she ignored her sisters’ calls that night while at a party.

In a 2004 flashback, Jonas takes the same language course. His father reveals that the Mikkola mother stole her sister Selima’s identity to escape to Europe. His uncle later repeats an unverified family rumor that Jonas’s father is the biological father of one of the sisters.

Anastasia and Daniela fight over their differing beliefs. Later, Daniela gets an electric shock while fixing the apartment’s electricity meter. She then avoids Anastasia, who attends a party and gets high. Daniela appears but leaves after Anastasia rebuffs her. Years later, Anastasia regrets not telling Daniela she loved her.

In August 2003, Hector and his friends found the publishing house Slakthuset. That November, Hector resigns from his university teaching position after confronting his mentor, Professor Lagerhjelm, about being a serial sexual predator. Anastasia submits her mother’s transcribed notebooks, titled *The Ticking Curse*, to Slakthuset, but it is rejected. She then launches a new career by successfully promoting Dino’s music.

In 2009, Evelyn is in a strained, nine-year relationship with Simon. Her best friend, Cecilia, decides to audition for the National Academy of Mime and Acting. While helping her prepare, Evelyn discovers her own talent and also auditions. Their friendship becomes strained as they both advance through the rounds. Ultimately, Evelyn is accepted and Cecilia is rejected. Evelyn quits her job to pursue acting.

In 2013, Ina and Anastasia attend Evelyn’s first major performance and are moved by her talent. For her final project, Anastasia suggests they travel to New York to research their great-grandfather, who supposedly helped build Rockefeller Center. In New York, they research at the Public Library, but Evelyn finds no official documentation of the workers. Inspired, she begins writing furiously. On their last day, at Coney Island, she performs a raw, angry monologue confessing her resentment toward her sisters and revealing her abusive relationship with Simon. The next morning, Evelyn is gone, leaving a note. Ina and Anastasia return to Sweden without her.

In autumn 2020, Ina goes on a hiking trip while worrying about her teenage son, Primo, a rising rapper. Meanwhile, Evelyn is living undocumented in New York. At a dinner party, a doctor notices a large lump on her neck. Ina’s trip is cut short when she receives a message from Hector that she interprets as Primo having been kidnapped. Her friends drive her back to Stockholm, where they discover Primo is being held at a recording studio over an unpaid debt. When Ina tries to intervene, Primo dismisses her. She returns home to find Hector with his former student, Klara. Ina leaves him and moves in with Anastasia.

In the fall of 2021, Jonas, now in New York for a fellowship, finds and visits Evelyn. He tells her that Ina has left Hector. In January 2022, the three sisters are reunited in a Stockholm hospital. A doctor informs them the lump on Evelyn’s neck is a benign cyst.

In 2035, the sisters’ aunt, the real Selima, is on her deathbed. In her final minute of life, she recalls for her family the story of Evelyn's visit thirteen years earlier. To give Evelyn peace, she had performed a ritual to lift the curse, but reveals a final secret in her thoughts: she had never actually cast a curse at all. Their mother had only believed she had. After this final thought, Selima dies.