Small World

 Small World by author Laura Zigman is her newest novel after Separation Anxiety.  The story of two divorced sisters who come together to live and start discussing their childhood.

All of us are born with our own unique personality.  But we are also influenced by the home and social environment we grow up in.  This is the story of two sisters who now as adults  are  coming to terms with how their childhood shaped their lives.  

Eleanor, who was born with cerebral palsy and a seizure disorder, dies only a year after her parents reluctantly send her to the Walter E. Fernald State School, once known as the Massachusetts School for the Feeble-Minded.  She is the middle sister to Linda and Joyce and the daughter of Lenny and Louise.

It was reluctantly that Louise and Lenny made the decision to send their child to the school, but they could not take care of her at home anymore.  Louise has tried everything to keep her family together and really never recovers from the trauma.  She spends the rest of her life doing charitable work for other disabled children,  Lenny dies of a drug overdose.  Joyce narrates this story of her life and her interaction with her sister who comes to live with her.

Two adult sisters living together for the first time since their dysfunctional childhood.  They have both had trouble in their marriages and now both divorced are trying to find a way to live together.  Trust and openness are a problem.  When the new neighbors move in upstairs there are so many secrets and falsehoods being the neighbors may not really know what is true and what is a story.  

As the sisters interact in different ways with the neighbors upstairs, they continue to push each others buttons. The hurt feelings, the jealousy, the feelings of neglect all surface as the two sisters try to understand their own reactions to their past and find some inner peace.

Don't we all wonder how the sibling we have is so different from us, even though we come from the same parents and grew up in the same house.  Based on real life events in her own life Zigman has written a compelling novel that really makes the reader think.