Dopo la recensione in italiano pubblicata all'inizio di questa settimana, ora è il turno di quella inglese perché si tratta della mia tappa per il blogtour - e ringrazio Stephanie della Algonquin Books per avermi coinvolta.
First of all, thanks to NetGalley and Stephanie from Algonquin Books for sending me an eARC in exchange for a honest review. You can also find it on Goodreads and NetGalley - the Italian one is here.
You have to know English isn’t my first language, so feel free to correct me if I make some mistakes while writing this review.
You have to know English isn’t my first language, so feel free to correct me if I make some mistakes while writing this review.
Title: Tigers, Not Daughters
Series: Tigers, Not Daughters #1
Author: Samantha Mabry
Publication Date: March 24th 2020
Pages: 288 (Kindle Edition)
Publisher: Algonquin Young Readers
Link Amazon: https://amzn.to/2QjN8Wq
Plot: The Torres sisters dream of escape. Escape from their needy and despotic widowed father, and from their San Antonio neighborhood, full of old San Antonio families and all the traditions and expectations that go along with them. In the summer after her senior year of high school, Ana, the oldest sister, falls to her death from her bedroom window. A year later, her three younger sisters, Jessica, Iridian, and Rosa, are still consumed by grief and haunted by their sister’s memory. Their dream of leaving Southtown now seems out of reach. But then strange things start happening around the house: mysterious laughter, mysterious shadows, mysterious writing on the walls. The sisters begin to wonder if Ana really is haunting them, trying to send them a message—and what exactly she’s trying to say.
TRIGGER WARNING: abusive relationship, bullying, domestic violence.
The last time I wrote about this book was about how much its beginning reminded me of Jeffrey Eugenides' The Virgin Suicides. That's because it starts with a plural first-person narrative, where a group of kids have been watching the Torres sisters for years from the window of the house across the street - the same happened in the Eugenides' book, where this group of kids watched the Lisbon sisters.
But where are the differences?
The Lisbon sisters were five, the Torres sisters are four.
The youngest Lisbon was the one to commit suicide, here it's the eldest Torres who dies and it's a tragic fatality.
The Eugenides' boys just looked at the Lisbon sisters in a voyeuristic manner with almost sexual implications, the observation of the Mabry's boys instead has has a more like infantile aspect of infatuation and they occasionally interact with the Torres sisters - and it's precisely due to their intervention that the sisters' escape is discovered and interrupted. And maybe, if the boys with their desire to help the Torres hadn't led to the discovery of the attempted escape, some time later Ana would not have died.
There are also those who have compared this book to a dark, horror and tint of magical realism of Little Women - which, I must admit, I have never read in my life.
The story begins on the night of the Torres sisters' interrupted escape, in which the boys of the house across the street watch the sisters come out one by one from the window of Ana's room - careful not to wake up the father who sleeps downstairs, ready to leave Southtown, San Antonio, their Latin neighborhood with all its traditions and the families that live there behind. But, as I have written above, the intervention of the boys causes their father Rafe Torres to catch them and bring them back. And, some time later, Ana dies.
If the Eugenides' book was entirely told by the boys, here the remaining Torres sisters find their voices and the story is told from their points of view.
The eldest now is Jessica, who works in a pharmacy and is the only one still willing to help her father when he is in a crisis - that is, when he drinks too much or needs money. Jessica has reacted to her sister's death by trying to become Ana: she has taken her room, her clothes, her make-up and she tries to occupy even her vacant place in the lives of others - but she is always, always angry.
Iridian follows, who no longer leaves the house due to an episode that we will later discover. Guilt overwhelms her, she has made Ana's books her own and fills notebooks after notebooks trying to write her own story and all those other stories Ana left incomplete along with her books hidden in the closet.
Rosa is the youngest - the gentle one with a pure heart, the spiritual one who always goes to church and who is said to be able to communicate with creatures, sensitive to everyone's lives.
One year after Ana's death, the life of the Torres sisters is shaken when each of them comes into contact with what appears to be Ana's ghost: the imprint of a hand on the shower curtain, phrases written on the walls, the sound of laughter and the smell of oranges in the house. Furthermore, on the anniversary day, a hyena ran away from the zoo to wander around their neighborhood and Rosa doesn't believe it to be a coincidence. Is it really Ana? And what does she want? Does she want to send a message? Does she want to keep the sisters together or terrorize them to the point of running them out of the house? Does she want to save them or does she want revenge?
Tigers, Not Daughters is a chilling story - especially if you read certain paragraphs late at night. Trust me, don't do it - or at least keep your lights on. It's a story about mourning, about the loss of one's identity - all the sisters have lost Ana, to whom they were tied in a different way and Jessica has above all lost herself trying to become her sister.
During that year, the sisters grew apart from each other, too caught up in their own grief and trying to reconstruct a semblance of life. All of them have a complicated relationship with neighbors because sometimes they are too nosy but they are also the only ones the sisters can ask for help since their father has never been able to be a support in any way - neither physical nor emotional - and they can only count on each other to help when things get ugly.
We know about the sisters' life at the moment because they tell us about it, we know excerpts from their past life when the boys take the stage in telling us about events they have been witnesses to or when the narration remains simply impersonal, as if it were a news story.
Its style involves the reader - also due to the short chapters - with a poetic sound, just like that oranges smelling wind that Iridian felt on her face and that envelops the reader. The parts involving Ana - or rather, her ghost - literally brought goosebumps on my arms and a shiver down my spine on more than one occasion and we get to see how much her presence upsets the girls' life even if, at the same time, they aren't even that much surprised by her appearance and they accept it because they know so much has remained unfinished.
However, it's a pity we have no stories about the Torres family's past life with their father: we know he drinks, he always asks Jessica for money, he insults Iridian, he seems to have an obsession with Ana so much that he always wore an old bracelet on the wrist that belonged to his eldest daughter - I will never get an answer to the doubt that had arisen in me after reading about this detail and after a phrase spoke by Iridian had made all those alarm bells ring in my head. It's understood Rafe Torres was never a good father, but we never find out about what made Ana always look out the window with her eyes turned to the sky and a look that screamed how much she wanted to fly away from there - about what pushed the Torres sisters to try to escape that night.
However, it remains a book with a magical, hypnotic and a little dark atmosphere that remains in your bones even after you have finished it.
Series: Tigers, Not Daughters #1
Author: Samantha Mabry
Publication Date: March 24th 2020
Pages: 288 (Kindle Edition)
Publisher: Algonquin Young Readers
Link Amazon: https://amzn.to/2QjN8Wq
Plot: The Torres sisters dream of escape. Escape from their needy and despotic widowed father, and from their San Antonio neighborhood, full of old San Antonio families and all the traditions and expectations that go along with them. In the summer after her senior year of high school, Ana, the oldest sister, falls to her death from her bedroom window. A year later, her three younger sisters, Jessica, Iridian, and Rosa, are still consumed by grief and haunted by their sister’s memory. Their dream of leaving Southtown now seems out of reach. But then strange things start happening around the house: mysterious laughter, mysterious shadows, mysterious writing on the walls. The sisters begin to wonder if Ana really is haunting them, trying to send them a message—and what exactly she’s trying to say.
--- ---
TRIGGER WARNING: abusive relationship, bullying, domestic violence.
The last time I wrote about this book was about how much its beginning reminded me of Jeffrey Eugenides' The Virgin Suicides. That's because it starts with a plural first-person narrative, where a group of kids have been watching the Torres sisters for years from the window of the house across the street - the same happened in the Eugenides' book, where this group of kids watched the Lisbon sisters.
But where are the differences?
The Lisbon sisters were five, the Torres sisters are four.
The youngest Lisbon was the one to commit suicide, here it's the eldest Torres who dies and it's a tragic fatality.
The Eugenides' boys just looked at the Lisbon sisters in a voyeuristic manner with almost sexual implications, the observation of the Mabry's boys instead has has a more like infantile aspect of infatuation and they occasionally interact with the Torres sisters - and it's precisely due to their intervention that the sisters' escape is discovered and interrupted. And maybe, if the boys with their desire to help the Torres hadn't led to the discovery of the attempted escape, some time later Ana would not have died.
There are also those who have compared this book to a dark, horror and tint of magical realism of Little Women - which, I must admit, I have never read in my life.
The story begins on the night of the Torres sisters' interrupted escape, in which the boys of the house across the street watch the sisters come out one by one from the window of Ana's room - careful not to wake up the father who sleeps downstairs, ready to leave Southtown, San Antonio, their Latin neighborhood with all its traditions and the families that live there behind. But, as I have written above, the intervention of the boys causes their father Rafe Torres to catch them and bring them back. And, some time later, Ana dies.
If the Eugenides' book was entirely told by the boys, here the remaining Torres sisters find their voices and the story is told from their points of view.
The eldest now is Jessica, who works in a pharmacy and is the only one still willing to help her father when he is in a crisis - that is, when he drinks too much or needs money. Jessica has reacted to her sister's death by trying to become Ana: she has taken her room, her clothes, her make-up and she tries to occupy even her vacant place in the lives of others - but she is always, always angry.
Iridian follows, who no longer leaves the house due to an episode that we will later discover. Guilt overwhelms her, she has made Ana's books her own and fills notebooks after notebooks trying to write her own story and all those other stories Ana left incomplete along with her books hidden in the closet.
Rosa is the youngest - the gentle one with a pure heart, the spiritual one who always goes to church and who is said to be able to communicate with creatures, sensitive to everyone's lives.
One year after Ana's death, the life of the Torres sisters is shaken when each of them comes into contact with what appears to be Ana's ghost: the imprint of a hand on the shower curtain, phrases written on the walls, the sound of laughter and the smell of oranges in the house. Furthermore, on the anniversary day, a hyena ran away from the zoo to wander around their neighborhood and Rosa doesn't believe it to be a coincidence. Is it really Ana? And what does she want? Does she want to send a message? Does she want to keep the sisters together or terrorize them to the point of running them out of the house? Does she want to save them or does she want revenge?
Tigers, Not Daughters is a chilling story - especially if you read certain paragraphs late at night. Trust me, don't do it - or at least keep your lights on. It's a story about mourning, about the loss of one's identity - all the sisters have lost Ana, to whom they were tied in a different way and Jessica has above all lost herself trying to become her sister.
During that year, the sisters grew apart from each other, too caught up in their own grief and trying to reconstruct a semblance of life. All of them have a complicated relationship with neighbors because sometimes they are too nosy but they are also the only ones the sisters can ask for help since their father has never been able to be a support in any way - neither physical nor emotional - and they can only count on each other to help when things get ugly.
We know about the sisters' life at the moment because they tell us about it, we know excerpts from their past life when the boys take the stage in telling us about events they have been witnesses to or when the narration remains simply impersonal, as if it were a news story.
Its style involves the reader - also due to the short chapters - with a poetic sound, just like that oranges smelling wind that Iridian felt on her face and that envelops the reader. The parts involving Ana - or rather, her ghost - literally brought goosebumps on my arms and a shiver down my spine on more than one occasion and we get to see how much her presence upsets the girls' life even if, at the same time, they aren't even that much surprised by her appearance and they accept it because they know so much has remained unfinished.
However, it's a pity we have no stories about the Torres family's past life with their father: we know he drinks, he always asks Jessica for money, he insults Iridian, he seems to have an obsession with Ana so much that he always wore an old bracelet on the wrist that belonged to his eldest daughter - I will never get an answer to the doubt that had arisen in me after reading about this detail and after a phrase spoke by Iridian had made all those alarm bells ring in my head. It's understood Rafe Torres was never a good father, but we never find out about what made Ana always look out the window with her eyes turned to the sky and a look that screamed how much she wanted to fly away from there - about what pushed the Torres sisters to try to escape that night.
However, it remains a book with a magical, hypnotic and a little dark atmosphere that remains in your bones even after you have finished it.
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