Review: "Sisters of Belfast" by Melanie Maure

Sisters of Belfast by Melanie Maure
Published February 2024 via Harper Paperbacks
★★★

Aelish and Isabel are two peas in a pod. Raised in a Catholic orphanage in Northern Ireland, their paths diverge early: Aelish ever the good student, the good girl; Isabel not so content to be told what to do. We meet them as children, then again as adults, with Aelish—now a nun—traversing an ocean to be with her sister, who is now a married mother of two and seriously ill. They've been estranged for years at this point, and it's only as the story continues that we understand why.

I had high hopes for this book but ended up struggling quite a bit with it. Some of that is style: lots and lots of short sections, switching between viewpoints as the sections change; for me, the sections were too short and the shifts too abrupt. Some of that is structure: I think we're supposed to care deeply about what has torn these two sisters apart, but because we don't see any of that estrangement (just hop from them being children to them reconnecting as adults), it's hard to be all that invested in that storyline.

A significant chunk of the story takes place in the convent in Belfast. It's helpful if you have some idea of what convents in Ireland and Northern Ireland (and elsewhere) were doing at the time; I've done some reading on the Magdalene laundries, and if you have too, there won't be that many surprises here. We see only a few nuns, one of whom is kind but perhaps a bit ineffectual, another of whom is...maybe not evil, but distinctly unkind. (I guess she's supposed to have gotten her comeuppance, because we're reminded over and over again that she's now not only infirm but fat and smelly—not loving the constant fat-shaming of the one "bad" character in the book.)

I think this would have worked better for me with a different structure—more chronological, perhaps, with Isabel's secret not held back until later in the book. Or perhaps with more moments of levity and less Sturm und Drang between Isabel and Aelish. As it was, the book had its moments but wasn't really what I was hoping for.