I See You Everywhere

I'm pretty sure this is my book club book for next month, but we're a little lax these days, especially with summer coming on. I really enjoyed Julia Glass' book, The Whole World Over, perhaps more than her better-known Three Junes, so I've been looking forward to reading I See You Everywhere. This is ostensibly the story of two grown sisters and their relationship, but it felt more like the story of two separate people with competing personalities. I suppose that's what life does to siblings once they grow up and out of the house, but I kind of wish I'd gotten more of a sense of how Clement and Louisa were the same, why where they came from made them who they are. Isn't that the point of a "family" novel? These sisters were just too different.

Louisa is the practical one. She has to be right and she's downright cranky about other people's mistakes or flaws (And she'll correct them). I saw some parallels to my own personality that I wish I hadn't because I didn't find her very likeable. She does soften as the book goes on (it spans the years between 1980 and 2005). Clement, in contrast, is the free-spirit, the sister who can't and won't be pinned down. Both sisters seem to know what they want, but Louisa for all her practicality and caution seems to take much longer to reach the life she thinks she should be living. And even then, it's not exactly what she had imagined. I like that. I don't know anyone who lives the way they thought they would, but some of my friends reach a close enough variation. I don't say that in a bad way. I think, unfortunately, that as we grow older, we realize we aren't really losing the dreams of youth (so to speak), but changing them to fit reality. You could see this as sad or you could see it as life. Towards the end of the book, Louisa says: As we grow older, however, our tragedies diminish in their grandeur...Because tragedy...proliferates all around us. Your boss succumbs to lymphoma. One friend has a stillbirth, another loses an eye. Someone's parents plummet off a cliff while driving on vacation in Scotland. Another friend's sister-in-law, the mother of a newborn baby, drops dead on a treadmill at the gym. You begin to understand that there are no quotas for hard knocks. It's not, alas, like you've used up your allotted share. You're simply growing older and this is how it is. One day you're no longer hearing "oh my God I can't believe it!" You're hearing "These things happen" and "There but for the grace of God." (Really? Plummeting off a cliff in Scotland?)

Not that this is a book about tragedy, though like life, this book has its share of--shall we say--transitions. It is not without humor, either. I love the scene that semi-explains the title. Louisa gets a typically garbled message from her mother to call her sister, though she won't be able to speak with her, she's told. Just call her "here." and Louisa calls the number, having no idea that Clement is, not for the first time, in a hospital after a terrible accident. But I call the number, I'm frantic, and this woman answers, 'I see you?' as if I'm supposed to answer, 'Aha, but I see you, too!' Like a game of some kind. All I can say is 'You see me? How?' But of course it's the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), and although it's funny to the nurse and to the reader, Louisa is furious at the casualness in the face of her sister's potential death. Louisa does not really have a sense of humor, though she does mellow over time.

Clement mellows over time, but not in a good way. I didn't quite buy the end to Clement's story and I felt like the end of the book tried too hard to tie the sisters together, but I haven't reached that age yet, so maybe I'll find it more believable some day.

I'm not sure Julia Glass got the diffferent ages right, in fact. I suppose that's the trick in a decade-spanning novel, especially told first-person in competing voices. I didn't quite believe the characters as 20 and 24 year-olds, though I found the parents mostly believable throughout. There's a random post-elderly aunt (grandmother?) thrown in at the beginning who seems like she'll have a bigger part than she does, but I wasn't convinced she was 98. (Wishful thinking on Glass' part?). As the sisters age, they become more believable, or else I adapted to their personalities.

Louisa, not being practical for once, says "Everything's an omen, I can't stand it."

Ray, the boyfriend says, "Superstition's the easy way out."

Okay, so we can read into everything or go along for the ride. If you're lucky, your life will be worth a story or two.