The Sea Sisters by Lucy Clarke

In Italy: Le sorelle dell’oceano translated by Ada Arduini.

In the US and Canada: Swimming at Night

Also available in French, German and Dutch.

More details here

 

 

A troubled relationship between two sisters, family secrets, a journey to the most exotic corners of the world and a mysterious death. It would seem the perfect recipe for success, but something is missing.

Katie and Mia are sisters but they’re very different. Katie, the eldest, is blond, responsible and predictable. Mia is dark, wild and rebellious and one day she decides to set out on a trip around the world with her best friend, Finn. Six months into Mia’s trip the police show up at Katie’s flat with the news that Mia’s body was found at the bottom of a cliff in Bali. She committed suicide, they say. But something is not quite right: Mia was supposed to be in Australia, with Finn. Yet the police say she died in Bali, alone. What happened? Was it really suicide?

Incapable of accepting the police’s version of events Katie decides to follow Mia’s footsteps to find out what really happened but also to feel still close to her sister. Afer recovering Mia’s travel journal she sets out on her own trip, using her siste’r diary as a guide: she follows the same route, sleeps in the same hostels and eats in the same restaurants as Mia.

I will not spoil the surprise by telling you what she finds out. Indeed, it probably won’t be that much of a surprise: despite some great ideas the story itself is rather predictable. Good raw material (a trip around the world, a mysterious death, a diary that might hold some answers) is ineffectively stitched together. Although Mia’s diary is fascinating, it is absolutely impossible for the reader to accept that Katie doesn’t read it all at once. We are given a feeble explanation about why she prefers to read it one entry at a time, but it isn’t quite convincing. It is only Katie’s implausible lack of knowledge of facts and events contained in the diary that moves the story forward and sets the scene for a few (melo)dramatic dénouements. And this is why the book fails: we see the strings that move the story, we realize that the diary is just a literary device and we cannot lose ourselves inside a plot the internal workings of which are so obvious.

It is however, Lucy Clarke’s first novel. So perhaps it’s all down to inexperience. I certainly hope so, because I really loved the idea. As it is, however, the descriptions of faraway places are the best part of the book and not surprisingly so, as they are also the truest part. As you will find out from the author’s website or the interview with her at the end of the book, she doesn’t have any sisters but is married to a surfer and spends a lot of time travelling with him to many of the places she describes in the book.

Although I am a little disappointed by The Sea Sisters, I will definitely keep an eye out for Lucy Clarke’s future work, with the hope that she will be able to develop more convincing plots while keeping the main ideas as fresh as this one.