I enjoyed this book, in spite of its cliches.
Mrs Weiner is a gifted author. She has written a very enthralling tale about two sisters who seem at such different ends when young, then switching sides when growing up save to reveal how similar they have been their entire life.
Being unnatural and nonconformist is what one sister starts out as only to discover the need to confirm and blend in, to belong to the cliché of femininity that the other sister aspired for when barely old enough to walk.
But there's a world between conformity and nonconformity that the author fails to address whatsoever.
For Mrs. Weiner, it's like women have just two opposite choices available: either go with the current or swim upstream, as if women can know no balance in their lives and are enraged by this awareness.
But women are so much more than these cliches. And what surprises me most is that the women portrayed by Mrs. Weiner seem unable to teach their daughters how to find a better life and change society.
Ironically, the only form of perceivable change is through the birth of a grandson, the first male after a long line of females. And this is as closeminded as it can get!
Still, it's a novel about women, and it's good to rediscover our roots and measure how far we've come in spite of the cliches 🙂