Fangirl

"This is another book I read quite recently and I just really loved. The sisters are Cath and Wren – they are twins. While the book is mostly about Cath – in terms of taking up space on the page, at least – Wren is such a looming presence through the whole book. It’s like her absence gives her character this larger-than-life role. The book is about the two of them going off to the same college and it’s narrated by Cath who struggles with social anxiety and has some mental health issues. Her twin sister, Wren, has decided that she doesn’t want to be one half of this pair of twins anymore. She wants to experience life on her own. She won’t share a room with Cath, she wants her independence and to get it she’ll cut herself off from her sister. Where they’d shared everything before, now they’re not together very much. Again, the story becomes one about Cath trying to find her own identity outside of this powerful relationship with her sister. The tension this creates is particularly intense because they are twins and because they have been so close. Yes, and that’s part of the issue. Wren cuts her hair and makes the effort to look distinct from her sister. She wants to try and shake Cath off. Cath ends up feeling really lost because of this. For a huge amount of the book she feels very abandoned by her sister and I think as a reader you empathise with that feeling. Because their mum also walked out on them when they were about eight, being abandoned by Wren feels so much worse even than it would have been anyway and it brings up difficult emotions and memories for Cath. The story is particularly powerful because it doesn’t exist in a vacuum, it exists in the context of everything that’s come before for these characters and so as their history is gradually revealed to the reader we better understand why Cath is so profoundly hurt. I found the relationship between Cath and her dad very moving. Because of her own struggles with mental health Cath is afraid of turning into her father. Wren is initially portrayed as the able, independent one, and Cath is the one who has the issues and the problems. Wren seems to be doing the healthy thing by going out and claiming her independence. But then, over the course of the book, you realise that both of them are hugely damaged by their relationship with both their parents, by what’s happened to them, and that’s just coming out in different ways. It’s really beautiful how – without giving too much away – how the sisters come back together and in a way that needs no apologies. There is no need because – and this idea is I think at the heart of writing about sister relationships – no matter what happens, they will always come back together. They will always be joined together in a meaningful and significant way. That is a bond that I think is particular to sibling relationships. It means that, no matter how bad the disagreement, there’s always a hope that things can be repaired in a way they couldn’t be necessarily in other relationships. It means that while a sister has the ability to hurt you deeply, she can also understand, reassure and support in a way that no one else can."