The Silent Sister. Rating: Execrable.

"I'm nervous." I glanced at her. She was watching me intently. "I'm afraid she'll act like she doesn't know me. Turn me away. That would be the worst."

I wanted to walk away in the middle of reading this book, as though someone had pointed out a news article about a burned-down office complex nearby. Time to move on to the next book, leaving no trace of my existence behind. But I soldiered on through for you, dear Reader.

I have had great difficulty in writing this review, because a small part of me wanted you to suffer as I did. I felt that perhaps you wouldn't understand how terrible this book was unless you tasted that poison for yourself. So I summarized the entire book - every superfluous plot point, every walk-on role for an extraneous character, every excruciating turn of phrase.

It was too much, reader. I am not so cruel as to submit you to that. I shall instead select a few key examples of flagrantly lazy writing and present them to you: a tasting menu, so that you know the full range of disappointment you might experience were you to mistakenly pick up and then ingest this embarrassment of a novel.

Let's begin.

The Silent Sister by the perhaps slightly overstimulated Diane Chamberlain

...has a lot going on for 350 pages, most of which is detail masquerading as substance. Let's explore.

The core of the novel is promising: Riley (our protagonist) is cleaning out the home of her late father and 'discovers evidence' that her sister, who everyone thinks committed suicide, might be alive. She embarks on a journey to discover her family's past.

That tidy little nugget of synopsis is stretched to a degree of agonizing attenuation over the course of the novel. The reader is forced to wade through a swamp of meaningless information - the father collected pipes, the brother likes to hunt, the suspicious girlfriend has a daughter who is recovering from a drug problem. If any of this information ever became in any way relevant to the plot or narrative, it would be redeemable. Instead, the book is nothing more than a drunk and companionless Aunt, who insists upon reporting on the affairs of all of her friends and colleagues - none of whom you will ever meet or care about in the slightest.

Do not be fooled into thinking that these characters contain multitudes - or, indeed, that they contain even a single multitude between the lot of them. False character development litters the novel like a trapdoor in the back of a hall closet: you peer at it, wondering where it might lead, but when you lift the latch, all you see are pipes and dust.

An example? Riley, throughout the book, staunchly refuses alcohol. It would seem that every person she encounters proffers wine or scotch or beer, and every time, she politely demurs. A hidden drinking problem? A fear of what will happen if she imbibes? Something repressed? It arises so many times that surely it represents a theme! Characterization! Hurrah!

But no - in one of the latter chapters, she drinks a beer (and nachos, to 'sop up the alcohol'. I am not making that language up, reader. It is dire.). Nothing happens. It is utterly insignificant. Oh, did you think that was a character trait? No, no. It was only text - meaningless detail dressed up as substance, sneaking into a party to which it was not invited.

Now, for Spoilers.

I shall summarize the Big Twists briefly:

The sister faked her suicide with the help of the father and a totally unnecessary character named "Tom" because she didn't want Riley to grow up with the stigma of being the daughter of a murder, because she is actually Riley's mother, and she was raped by her violin teacher when she was a very young violin prodigy, and then she killed him. The sister/mother ran away to San Diego, discovered/realized/accepted that she was a lesbian, and now has two children with her wife, with whom she is in a semi-famous bluegrass band.

Riley attends a concert to meet her long-lost sister/mother:

"She started playing again, the bounce of her hair like a symbol of the freedom she'd stolen for herself."

Like a symbol. I mourn, deeply and without restraint, for that sentence.

By the end of the book, after a series of clumsy personality reversals by many of the overwritten, underdeveloped characters, Riley and her sister/mom are the best of friends. It is perhaps the most disappointing ending that could have been written for such an already unrewarding novel.

It is a rare thing, reader, for me to feel such unmitigated detestation of a book. I am a lover of books, and this book has stretched my ability to call that love 'unconditional' well beyond the breaking point.

Rating: Execrable. 

Possible ratings: Magnificent, Divine, Satisfactory, Tiresome, Lamentable, Execrable. This is a blog about words, what rating system did you expect?