Novel title: The Silent Sister

Author: Diane Chamberlain

The brief outline of the plot:
For most of Reilly MacPherson’s life she has believed her older sister, Lisa had commit suicide when she was only 2. This statement has been contradicted when Riley goes back to her hometown to clean out her recently deceased father’s house, along with the help of her brother. This was all until she found information about her elder sister, murdering someone and then killing herself. Even though Lisa’s body was never found Reilly never thought that she was still alive.

Ideas explored in the text:

Dishonesty is a big idea addressed in “The Silent Sister”. Some Examples of this in the book is when her father friends we dis-honest to Reilly after her death, as they never told her that she was adopted. But I believe this is fine as it isn’t there information to tell her and it should be her family telling her, but because of her father’s death, there was no family for her to question as her mother died from cancer 4 years back. Another example is that Tom, her father friends, helped Lisa fake her death. Reilly, after snooping around her father stuff figured out that every month her father would pay Tom to keep it a secret that Lisa is still alive. Strangely enough, in their cases dis-honestly lead to forgiveness. This is because after realizing her sister is still alive, and after chasing her and finally finding her, she is told that Lias is actually her mother as she got raped when she was 16. After Reilly hearing the whole story she forgives Tom as it is a very hard secret to keep from her and he knew Lisa was Reilly’s mother. She also forgives her father’s friend as she was in a dark place when they told her and all she could think about was how she hates her family because they never told her the simple truth about her adoption. Another idea explored in this text was endurance. Reilly at a young age the two had to endure that her sister “committed suicide”, she then has to endure her own mother death, then her brother has just returned from war, father’s death, how she’s adopted, and finally has had to endure seeing her actually living and healthy sister who is actually her mother. Enduring all this must have been tough on her as she is only 28 and is still at a young age for all these events to happen in her life. This previous education leads to happiness for Reilly as she is now living a happy and content life with her birth mother away of fear and rumors about her mother “killing someone” when the truth is that she never did.

Connection to the real world

Rape is a type of sexual assault involving sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual penetration carried out against a person without that person’s consent. This crime is still common today and this is awful and for the victim, it is a nightmare re-occurring over and over again. In the news at the moment, revenge rape is happening in Pakistan. A 16-year-old girl is going to be raped as a consequence of her brother actions. Her brother raped another younger girl in their village. So the council has agreed that the victim’s brother is going to have sexual intercourse with the dupes younger sister.

What does this teach us?

Death happens a lot and we can’t do anything about it. It is in our circle of life and we can’t delay it. We need to move on and not dwell on the past and live for the dead victim. The victim wouldn’t want you to stop your life and give up everything just because of this inconvenience. After a while, they would want you to regain your strength and continue living life to the fullest. It teaches us the rape is still a very horrible thing and occurs daily. It teaches us to keep an object or thought the resembles home. This is so we never forget who we are or what home is and means. This is seen when Lisa leaves her town to California to start the new journey of her life. Her dad tells her to not take anything from home with her but she obliges this rule and takes a jade necklace that her parents had given her on her previous birthday. Throughout the book, Lisa pulls out the necklace and tells herself that this is for the better and that it is a token that reminds her of her family and home every day.

Connection to your personal experience?

This novel has a slight connection to me and this connection is loyalty to your siblings. They are not around forever so if you treat them with kindness and respect you will get them back, but I you are mean and rude that how the will treat you. In the book when Daniel, Reilly’s brother finds out that Lisa is still alive he gets annoyed and hates her all over again before even hearing her story about why she faked her death. He did this because she never reached out to him or Reilly when they were in pain after losing their own sister, even though reaching out to them would spoil her plan of living in secrecy. Me, having 2 sisters I have to be kind to them most of the time or else our relationship will slowly fall apart and this would be awful not having a ‘sister’ anymore.

Recommendation?

I would definitely recommend this book as it is an easy read, with intense vocabulary. Diane Chamberlain has done an amazing job or really painting the picture in every scene, which helps will reading as I make us just want to keep reading and reading. The only down side of this book that I found was that half way through it begins the change every chapeter to a different view/person. One chapter is about Lisa’s new life, then about Reilly’s life back home, then Lisa, then Reilly, so on and on. This becomes very confusing as you sometimes have to go back and see what happened the last time the chapter was about the person or else it doesn’t make sense. Besides that this book I very good for people who enjoy reading genres of mystery, crime and discovery.