“Yes! Be quiet, because anything is possible once the horse is stopped: slit wrists, a nightgown damp from the heavy drops of their own tears, from the slow trickle of their blood; a delicate, belated haemophilia preventing them from turning over, soaking their hips, their bodies stuffed with sawdust beneath their glued on heads; their pink porcelain necks beneath their collars.“

This is my second book from my subscription to andotherstories.org but my first to read and review. Thus I am reviewing a little before the publication date. I must say I really enjoyed it BUT it will not be for everyone! So if you like the quote above please, please try this book. If not stay away as I picked this quote at random and its very typical. Consider yourself warned folks.

This is a story of a young seventeen-year-old girl who spies three faces of three sisters in the window across from her sitting room during a storm one night. She quickly becomes obsessed with them and their story. She loves them and wishes them dead. She does not know their name.

The reader quickly becomes lost in a shadowy world where you are not sure if the Sisters are real, partly real and partly imaginary or a total figment of the Protagonists imagination. Nobody in the story is named and prose and imagery are dense ( I read another piece of literary fiction, [b:Crudo|36638609|Crudo|Olivia Laing|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1516979782s/36638609.jpg|58405449], to take a break from this at one point - seriously!).

Overall, I have to admit, that I cannot get multiple questions out of my mind. How much of this story is a commentary on the isolation of young women in early Argentina? How much of it is a homage to the Brontë sisters (the introduction says it was inspired by a picture of the three sisters and it definitely has some gothic undertones that remind me other their work)? Is the main protagonist mad and or a psychopath? She certainly claims that loving the older sister is responsible for her wishing the older sisters dead and she wishes her dead a lot. If the mark of good literary fiction is to drive you crazy with unanswered questions this one certainly fits the mark.

This is recommended to those who like dense poetic prose and who thought that Shirley Jackson’s [b:The Haunting of Hill House|89717|The Haunting of Hill House|Shirley Jackson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327871336s/89717.jpg|3627] had too much plot and tied up the ending too well.