Three Daughters

 Book 48 of my 2020 Reading Challenge

read from June 12 - July 7

Three Daughters

by Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Summary (via the book jacket)

published 2002

The Wasserman sisters couldn't be more different, but somehow they must find a way to come together. Shoshanna, the control freak, watches her world turn to chaos as an impending big birthday forces her to reevaluate her contented life. Leah, brilliant English professor, crusading feminist, and passionately conflicted wife and mother, now faces the prospect of losing the husband she has always taken for granted. Rachel, who has papered over her losses with an athlete's discipline and a pragmatism bordering on self-sacrifice, watches her world crumble but finds her destiny in the ruins. Confronting old wounds and forging new bonds, these three daughters of a complicated, charismatic father slowly unite as a force to be reckoned with as they struggle to break their parents' silence and understand their past.

My Opinion

3 stars

I loved this description about something difficult yet necessary: "Yet Shoshanna felt about her lunches with Leah the way she felt about her period: it gave her cramps but she'd be miserable if she missed one."

Having one of the characters laying in bed reviewing her life while unable to sleep was a great way to introduce some backstory, particularly some of the mundane things (she imagined each object in her childhood home as her personal way of counting sheep) that added depth but could be awkward to add in somewhere else.

I rated it 3 stars because I was interested while I was reading it but didn't really miss it when it was over.  I would probably read the author again though.

A Few Quotes from the Book

"If only. In the futility of hindsight lies proof that one can never control everything. It's the choices we make without thinking, the coincidences, the accidental confluence of person, place, and time, that chart destiny's detours. Only after the fact can we see how many minor decisions, how many small moves and tiny turns led us to the point of crisis."

"Each of the Wasserman daughters had used marriage to recover from her childhood."