Summary
The famous opening line of the novel warns of the bleak narrative to follow: "Neither of the Grimes sisters would have a happy life, and looking back it always seemed that the trouble began with their parents' divorce." Emily and Sarah are sisters who share little in terms of character, but much in terms of disappointment with their lives. Emily, the younger and more intellectual and cosmopolitan of the two, seeks love in numerous disappointing affairs and short-term relationships. Sarah, the prettier and more conventional one, marries young and bears children to an uncouth and abusive husband.
The novel begins in the 1930s, when the sisters are children, and ends in the 1970s several years after Sarah's death. It primarily revolves around Emily as the book's central character, but the book employs Yates' characteristic shifts of consciousness throughout. Their troubled, rootless mother Pookie, like many Yatesian matriarchs, is likely modeled on his own mother, who was nicknamed Dookie.
The girls’ father was a newspaper man and they inherit his talent for writing, although he separates from their mother early on and she brings them up in various locations in the New York suburbs. They return to manhattan in their teens when Pooky becomes a realtor as the Second World War is ending. Sarah is older and more self assured, dark haired, and has a figure that the skinnier Emily envies. A family of English immigrants move in upstairs and it is while walking out with their son Tony to an Easter parade that he and Sarah are photographed by a newspaper. This snapshot of a seemingly carefree moment is the touchstone of the novel, from which the family’s path deviates as the years go on.
Sarah marries the boorish Tony and moves upstate, having three sons in quick succession. While he has some delusions of grandeur, he is still a blue collar worker. Sarah occasionally tries to write, and when Pooky retires she moves into a Granny flat at their house.
Emily, meanwhile, gets a scholarship to Bernard, completes her college education, and discovers herself sexually. She too marries early, but it is a disaster and she extricates herself quickly. She becomes a copywriter for a trade journal and starts a relationship with her new editor, a shy aspiring poet. He gets an academic post in the rural Midwest and she moves out there with him. This relationship stifles her, and realising that he is a failure, she returns to New York.
In the New York of the 1960’s she enjoys a burgeoning career in commercial copywriting and is mentored by a female boss. She has a succession of interesting boyfriends, enjoys parties, and lives a seemingly carefree life. She makes only a single attempt to write something serious, about abortion, based an on her own experiences, but it lies unfinished.
When their mother is found collapsed in a heat and alcohol induced stupor, and is confined to a large sprawling psychiatric hospital, Sarah summons Emily and they reminisce fondly about their father, although there is some unexpressed jealousy on Emily’s part because Sarah was clearly his favourite. She sees her sister occasionally as the years go by, including when Tony brings Sarah to New York to see a show, a visit marred by Sarah getting drunk and Tony beating her up. Emily is relieved when Sarah doesn’t take her up on her half-hearted offer to come and live with her in manhattan.
Emily is in her late 30’s when her boss wins a major account for the firm, and through this work Emily meets Howard. He becomes her entire world, although he still yearns for his younger ex-girlfriend who has gone to find herself on the west coast. They have a comfortable life together although without the security of a marriage contract, which occasionally rankles with Emily. They visit Sarah and Tony, and Emily quietly realises that Sarah is an alcoholic like her mother.
Later, Sarah has a stay in the same psychiatric hospital as Pooky, but is released only to die tragically from a drunken fall some time later. Emily takes Howard to the funeral and his reliability is contrasted with her own reliance on alcohol as a crutch. By now, Sarah’s rather earnest eldest son Peter is training to be an episcopalian priest.
Back in New York, Howard returns from one of his frequent business trips to the west coast and announces to a not entirely surprised Emily that he has been visiting his younger ex-girlfriend and that having established her career, she is now ready to take him back and settle down. He departs from her life as abruptly as he had entered it. Emily is devastated but quietly seethes with unexpressed rage. Her work suffers and she is eventually fired. Sliding further into depression, she begins to drink in the daytimes, although she makes one further futile attempt at writing.
Forcing herself out for a walk one day she thinks of Sarah’s son Peter, and goes to visit him and his young wife. He tells her that Sarah always admired her for making her own way in life, which makes her burst into tears. She is on edge, admitting to him she no longer works, and tells him outright that she suspects Tony might have had something to do with Sarah’s death. Her accusations escalate into a scathing and unwarranted attack on Peter himself as they arrive at his ideal family home. However, he does not retaliate, and instead invites her to come inside.
Emily Jane Brontë was an English novelist and poet who is best known for her only novel, Wuthering Heights, now considered a classic of English literature. She also published a book of poetry with her sisters Charlotte and Anne titled Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell with her own poems finding regard as poetic genius. Emily was the second-youngest of the four surviving Brontë siblings, between the youngest Anne and her brother Branwell. She published under the pen name Ellis Bell.
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