When the book The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants first came into my house, I had no intention of reading it. After all, it was clearly a book for girls somewhere between the ages of “horse-crazy” and “prom-dates”, but certainly not for thirty-something moms of the afore-mentioned girls. After all, what could there be for me (or any other tired old working mom) in a book about four 15-year-olds who’ve been friends since birth?
I was so wrong. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants is for girls from 10 to 110; the three females in our house who’ve read it are 12, 16, and 35 - and we’re anxiously hopeful about how the upcoming movie will turn out (because, of course, we’re going to see it as soon as it comes out!). This is the book that prompted my 16-year-old to ask, “Why don’t we have fussy, overbearing Greek relatives?” (But never fear, it’s most definitely not the junior version of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding!”)
By the time you get to the end of the book, you’ve laughed, and blinked back tears, and smiled bittersweetly, and felt your heart leap at long-forgotten memories - and altogether fallen into the Sisterhood shared by Carmen, Lena, Bridget, and Tibby. A cynical reader will note in the “About the Author” section that it’s the first book by Ann Brashares, and sigh a little at the likelihood that the second doesn’t live up to the sheer joy, pain, discovery, and honesty of the first. But luckily, the two sequels thus far - The Second Summer of the Sisterhood, and Girls in Pants - are just as exquisite.
The books speak to your heart, about what it is to be a daughter, and a mother. About what it is to be a big sister, or a stepsister, or to long to have any sibling at all. About what it is to be giddily drunk with first love, and abjectly devastated by lost love, and bravely reaching out to love again after heartbreak. About what it is to be lost, to be found, and to realize you knew where home was the whole time. About doing the wrong thing without realizing it, and doing the right thing when you hate it, and coming to terms with the right and the wrong…and the way things just are.
But most of all the books are about love…
Sometimes when she thought of Eric, and now more powerfully when she saw him, she felt some achy nostalgia for her old self. For the dauntless, daring soul she used to be. There was something vaguely enchanted about that time. There were certain qualities you possessed carelessly. And you couldn’t retrieve them when they were gone. The very act of caring made them impossible to regain.
Not all of that spirit was gone. She still had it, but she had a more tempered version. That time with Eric in Baja had been both the height of that magic and its calamitous end. He had managed to inspire both.
She was a bit more fragile now. Or no. Maybe she was less fragile. Maybe she had come to terms with her injuries and she knew how to protect them. She was more self-protective, that was true. But she was a girl without a mother. She had to protect herself.
Not just about the love a girl feels for her first lover, but the love a girl has for her irksome toddler sister, her unexpected & unlikely new friend who’s dying of cancer, her quietly intense twin brother, her grandfather who doesn’t speak English, her stepsister that she used to think she hated, the wide-ranging & conflicted flavors of love for her mother, and of course the tumultuous yet solid love for her best friends.
The books are about recognizing the connections who help to make you who you are, and coming to terms with how the people in your life help shape you, while discovering yourself and appreciating just who that person is - but the stories are so compelling, and just downright enjoyable, that you’re too busy devouring each page to notice that there’s a “deeper” level while you’re reading them. It’s a rarity to find a book (or movie, or conversation, or anything in life!) that engages your feelings so intensely that you don’t realize how much it prompts you to think until later - and that’s exactly what I want in a book!
