Blue Sisters

Three estranged siblings return to their family home in New York after their beloved sister&rsquo;s death in this unforgettable story of grief, hope, and the complexities of family, from the acclaimed author of <Cleopatra and Frankenstein<.

The three Blue sisters are exceptional&mdash;and exceptionally different. Avery, the eldest and a recovering heroin addict turned strait-laced lawyer, lives with her wife in London; Bonnie, a former boxer, works as a bouncer in Los Angeles following a devastating defeat; and Lucky, the youngest, models in Paris while trying to outrun her hard-partying ways. They also had a fourth sister, Nicky, whose unexpected death left the family reeling. A year later, as they each navigate grief, addiction, and ambition, they find they must return to New York to stop the sale of the apartment they were raised in.

But coming home is never as easy as it seems. As the sisters reckon with the disappointments of their childhood and the loss of the only person who held them together, they realize that the greatest secrets they&rsquo;ve been keeping might not have been from one another but from themselves.

Imbued with Coco Mellors&rsquo;s signature combination of humor and heart, <Blue Sisters< is a story of what it takes to keep living after loss&mdash;and, ultimately, to fall in love with life again.

Autorentext
Coco Mellors grew up in London and New York, where she received&#160;her&#160;MFA in fiction from New York University.&#160;Her&#160;debut novel, Cleopatra and Frankenstein, was a Sunday Times bestseller, has been translated into over fifteen languages, and is currently being adapted for television. She lives with her husband and son in New York.

Klappentext

*NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK AS FEATURED ON TODAY • Three estranged siblings return to their family home in New York after their beloved sister’s death in this “deeply nuanced and compelling” (Vogue) novel, from the acclaimed author of Cleopatra and Frankenstein.*

“A beautiful portrait of grief and the world-shaping bond sisters share.”—Real Simple

A VOGUE AND HARPER’S BAZAAR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

The three Blue sisters are exceptional—and exceptionally different. Avery, the eldest and a recovering heroin addict turned strait-laced lawyer, lives with her wife in London; Bonnie, a former boxer, works as a bouncer in Los Angeles following a devastating defeat; and Lucky, the youngest, models in Paris while trying to outrun her hard-partying ways. They also had a fourth sister, Nicky, whose unexpected death left the family reeling. A year later, as they each navigate grief, addiction, and ambition, they find they must return to New York to stop the sale of the apartment they were raised in.

But coming home is never as easy as it seems. As the sisters reckon with the disappointments of their childhood and the loss of the only person who held them together, they realize that the greatest secrets they’ve been keeping might not have been from one another but from themselves.

Imbued with Coco Mellors’s signature combination of humor and heart, Blue Sisters is a story of what it takes to keep living after loss—and, ultimately, to fall in love with life again.

Leseprobe
Chapter One

Lucky

Lucky was late. Irresponsibly, irreversibly, in-danger-of-losing-this-job late. She had a fitting with a couture maison in the Marais at noon, but that was ten minutes ago, and she was still miles away on the metro. She had spent the night before at a fashion week party enjoying the open bar (the only kind Lucky cared for), where she’d met a pair of corporate-employed graffiti artists who were anxious to restore their reputations as creatives on the fringe of society. They’d offered to take her on the back of one of their motorcycles to an abandoned mansion, a former diplomat’s home in the 16th Arrondissement, that they’d set their sights on tagging. Lucky wasn’t particularly into the concept of defacing a historical building with spray paint, but she was always happy to delay the night ending.

The building had been more tightly secured than expected, dotted with security cameras and encircled by an intimidating pronged fence, so they’d settled for spraying the metal shutters of a nearby tabac instead, the graffiti artists opting for libertarian slogans popularized by the Paris protests of 1968—It is forbidden to forbid!—while Lucky went for a classic rendering of a penis and balls. They’d watched the sun come up from the steps of Palais de Tokyo while drinking bottles of pink Veuve Clicquot they’d swiped from the party, then returned to Lucky’s place to smoke a joint. After a predictable attempt by the two men to initiate a threesome, Lucky suggested they skip the middle woman and just do each other before passing out fully dressed on top of her bed, awakening several hours later in her empty and, thankfully, unransacked apartment to a perky reminder from her booker to wash her hair before the fitting today.

It was also the one-year anniversary of Nicky’s death.

As the metro surged on, Lucky checked her phone to find a missed call and voicemail from Avery, who was no doubt on a mission to get her to “process” her feelings about this day, plus a formal-looking email from their mother she promptly ignored. She missed the New York subway with its filth, reliable unreliability, and lack of cell service; the Paris metro was almost aggressively efficient and fully accessible by cell phone, even underground. Here, there was nowhere to hide. Without listening to Avery’s message, Lucky slid the phone back into her pocket. She had not seen any member of her family since Nicky’s funeral a year ago. That night, a strong, hot wind blew through the city; it upturned restaurant tables and sent garbage cans tumbling down avenues, it broke power lines and snapped tree branches in Central Park. And it scattered Lucky and her sisters to their corners of the world, without any intention of returning home.

She was now fifteen minutes late. In her hurry to leave, she’d forgotten her headphones, an oversight guaranteed to throw off her entire day. Lucky usually couldn’t walk more than one block without digging them into her ears, building a musical buffer between herself and the world. But she’d gotten out of the door in record time, helped by the fact she’d forgone her usual breakfast of a Marlboro Red and an ibuprofen and left the house in the clothes she’d woken up in. Surreptitiously, she gave her T-shirt a sniff. A bit smoky, a bit sweaty, but, overall, not too bad.

“Je voudrais te sentir.”

Lucky’s eyes jumped to the man sat across from her, who had just spoken. He had the tense, rodentlike face of prey, but his eyes were all predator. In his hands, he clutched a large Volvic water bottle over his crotch, pointing it toward her. He was smiling.

“What?” she asked, though she had no desire to know what this man had said, to speak to him at all.

“Ah! You are American!”

He pronounced it the typical French way—emphasis on the can.

“Yup.”

Lucky nodded and reached for her phone again, trying to radiate uninterest.

“You are beautiful,” he said, leaning toward her.

“Mm, thanks.”

She kept her eyes glued to her phone. She considered shooting off a text to her booker to say she was running behind, then decided against it. That would only make the lateness real. Better to enjoy the comfort of this limbo period while she could, before anyone knew she was messing up yet aga…