The Faraday Girls-Monica McInerney

The Faraday Girls
Monica McInerney
Ballantine, Sep 2007, $13.95
ISBN: 9780345490230

In 1979 in Tasmania, Australia, the Faraday Girls (Juliet, Miranda, Eliza, Sadie, and Clementine) live with their widower father Leo. However, the dynamics changes when sixteen years old Clementine informs her dad and her siblings she is pregnant. The Faraday family agrees to help Clementine raise the child until he or she enters elementary school; at that time the sisters can restart their dreams of independence though Leo sees his grandchild as the tie to keep his daughters safely home with him.

When baby Maggie turns five, Sadie makes a terrible error in judgment that shatters the bond between her and her sisters; she leaves. Maggie cannot understand why one of her doting aunts left. The other three aunts begin their personal flights as Juliet opens a café; Miranda becomes a flight attendant; and Eliza is a life coach. Two decades later Maggie lives in New York yearning to bring her scientist mom and aunts back together; Leo arrives with a proposition to reconcile everyone with a family trip to Ireland. There Maggie learns the secrets that devastated the family when she was five years old, but to reveal it or not to reveal it is the question as either way harm to loving relatives occurs.

This is a warm family drama that focuses on broken promises that leads to destroying loving relationships that turn to acrimonious dysfunction. The five FARADAY GIRLS, their niece and their dad contain unique personalities and FAMILY BAGGAGE so that their issues seem real. Although the splintered family saga seems overly wrenching once Maggie knows the whole truth, Monica McInerney provides a deep look at how easily seemingly invincible relationships can shatter.

Harriet Klausner