The Good Sister by Drusilla Campbell Review and Giveaway

Paperback: 352 pages 
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing; Original edition (October 1, 2010)
Language: English


Roxanne Callahan has always been her younger sister's caretaker. Now married, her happiness is threatened when beautiful and emotionally unstable Simone, suffering from crippling postpartum depression, commits an unforgivable crime for which Roxanne comes to believe she is partially responsible. In the glare of national media attention brought on her sister, Roxanne fights to hold her marriage together as she is drawn back into the pain of her troubled past and relives the fraught relationship she and Simone shared with their narcissistic mother. At the same time, only she can help Simone's nine year old daughter, Merell, make sense of the family's tragedy. Cathartic, lyrical, and unflinchingly honest, THE GOOD SISTER is a novel of four generations of women struggling to overcome a legacy of violence, lies and secrecy, ultimately finding strength and courage in their love for each other.   

My Take: May 26, 2005.  The day I stopped loving Tom Cruise.  That is the day he slammed Brooke Shields for publicly announcing her reaction to postpartum depression.  She chose medication.  Gasp!  Since then I've felt nothing but contempt for the man who has never had his body rewired while internal organs are pushed aside and changes in hormonal balance makes you cry because the cat coughed up a hairball. 

On this particular day, my own body was waging a war with itself, having pushed a person the size of a pot roast through a hole the size of a nostril, and for some mysterious reason, my previously aesthetically pleasing breasts became as hard as granite were leaking sustenance for a child that was wholly dependent on me.  No amount of positive thinking was going to magically restore my sleep deprived, physically rewired body.  Nope. Instead I did what any sane woman would do. 

I painted the family room.  And the kitchen.  And the entry.   

To this day, I can't properly articulate my manic response to giving birth.  I can only sit back, sigh and enjoy the ambiance of the colors. 

And so, back to the book and painting.  The author paints a clear path to Simone's thinking and thinking errors.  The feeling of being overwhelmed and helpless as the demands continue to pile around her, looking for impossible solutions and eventually slipping past depression into psychosis.  It is as disturbing as it is well articulated.  A new mother may see a sliver of herself in Simone and feel uncomfortable.  An old mother may see more than just a sliver.  Who hasn't felt at least a little suffocated by the demands of motherhood and the weight of responsibility?  Some resentment or frustration at times?  Some may have felt apathy? 


The author adds to Simone's personality bipolar, learned helplessness, narcissism, and provides a breeding ground for Simone's role.  At the same time, Simone's older sister, Roxanne, takes on the caretaking role from a very early age.  Co-dependency is threaded throughout the story by not only Roxanne but others from Simone's life and ancestral chain.  

This is a work of fiction however, the author lays her soul out by taking on such a difficult subject.  This book covers so many different aspects of relationships and mental illness and health along with multidimensional characters, I would strongly suggest it for a mature (women with children) Reading Group. Reading level is not difficult, the language does contain the "F" word at times.  



Thanks to Brad at Hatchette, I have 3 copies up for grabs!

Usual Rules

U.S. and Canada only

No P.O. Boxes

Only one copy per household

Fill out the form below.

Contest ends December 3, 2010.

Feel free to leave a comment to validate my existence. Tell me I am interesting/funny/quite strange/need serious therapy.