** spoiler alert ** I'm currently reading this for the third time in a row. I just can't seem to let go of this world. It's making weepy, it's making me feel like a teenager again (I'm 30) when everything is urgent and everything hurts.
I can't say exactly what its hold over me is. The characters are in a way too perfect to be true, beautiful, intelligent, priviliged, and the inability of Meg and Elv to get on for some reason annoys me- I want the three sisters to be close, I feel sad for Meg that she is left out. The story is a little melodramatic, tragedy after tragedy befalls the family- and yet they're still unnaturally beatiful-even Elv after years of drug abuse and self-harm. It angers me slightly that Elv doesn't have to work for her happyish ending- her dead mother's boyfriend, a man she barely knows, finds her a job and appartment, her grandmother supports her financially. She comes across as a sad character at the end, unable to function fully as an adult. And Claire too is given things too easily, she just happens to have an extraordinary talent for a job her grandmother's friends can give her, and even her falling in love is arranged by someone else.
And yet the writing is beautiful and the world of the story, though sad and dark is beautiful, and it keeps pulling me back.