The Faraday Girls
by Monica McInerney
ISBN: 9780345490230
McInerney's sixth novel depicts the tensions that emerge between five sisters as they struggle to establish their own identities. The book opens in 1979, in Tasmania, Australia, just before the lives of Juliet, Miranda, Eliza, Sadie, Clementine and their father, Leo, are irrevocably altered by 16-year-old Clementine's announcement that she's pregnant. The sisters and widower Leo make a pact to raise the child until it begins elementary school. Despite their unyielding love for baby Maggie, the pact is an enduring challenge for the sisters (who range in age from 16 to 23), who each yearn for independence. Leo, however, sees Maggie's birth as the perfect excuse to keep all his daughters under the same roof. When Maggie is five, one sister's colossal error in judgment ruptures the tenuous familial bonds. The consequences play out as the novel fast-forwards 20 years, with the family fractured and Maggie living in New York City. McInerney (The Alphabet Sisters ;Family Baggage ; etc.) has written a sprawling tale, though the material is relatively light. Straightforward prose (leavened with spots of humor and upbeat, witty exchanges) keeps the narrative moving along. It should be a crowd-pleaser.
