Blue Sisters
By Coco Mellors
4th Estate
ISBN: 978-0-00-862299-2
342pp.

Famous for her bestselling Cleopatra and Frankenstein, Coco Mellors focuses her talent in the novel Blue Sisters on delineating the lives of Avery, Bonnie and Lucky Blue, whose existence has been torn apart by the loss of their beloved sister, Nicky.

Although inevitable comparisons to Little Women have been noted by critics, it is more accurate to suggest that Mellors appears to be a 21st century Nora Ephron (whose sisters Delia, Amy and Hallie Ephron helped to shape the famous New York-based screenwriter and novelist’s works).

While Mellors writes about a fictional set of sisters who have grown up in New York, the parallels to the writing of Nora Ephron and her sister Delia are unmistakeable. Blue Sisters, a novel of sisterhood, loss, anguish and healing, made it into the list of the New York Times bestsellers, and it is easy to see why.

The book situates its time-frame a year after Nicky overdosed on pain medication. She was the most pleasant and, ironically, the least problematic of the Blue family. The patriarch of the family was an alcoholic and their British-born mother maintained a stiff upper lip of stoicism and denial in the face of this dysfunctionality throughout her daughters’ childhood.

Coco Mellors’ remarkably engaging latest novel is an authentic story about sisterhood, sibling rivalry, loss, anguish and healing

In order to prove that she would be nothing like her parents, Avery became a high-powered lawyer, whereas Bonnie found satisfaction in the sport of boxing. Lucky, the most physically beautiful of the four, took up modelling as a profession, eschewing the completion of high-school. By contrast, Nicky became a high-school teacher, who was much beloved by her students. One of the persistent and central tragedies at the heart of the novel is that the most emotionally........

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