Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors: Deftly braided stories of volatile characters

Readers of Cleopatra and Frankenstein(2022), the much-hyped debut novel by Coco Mellors, will admit that her plot was overpowered by frequent infusions of drugs, sex, and alcohol. Her characters are hammered by every excess under the sun. All of them, be they in their 20s or 40s, have a lot of adulting to do.

With Blue Sisters, her second novel, Mellors doesn’t disappoint on either count. From heroin to opioids, there’s more than a fair bit of substance abuse in the story, as there are characters who are volatile, unreasonable and resolutely immature. But there’s also something else: a desire to find a place among the league of the greatest “sibling novels” (think of Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice and Little Women, among others) that have made millions of readers laugh, cry and fall in love with fictional characters for centuries.

At the centre of Blue Sisters are the four eponymous sisters—Avery, Bonnie, Nicky and Lucky Blue—who grew up in New York, like Mellors, only to be scattered far away by the storms and stresses of a life-altering tragedy. The story begins with Nicky’s death, at the age of 27, although there is nothing remotely notorious about Nicky unlike the other members of the infamous “27 club”.

The third, and most affable, among her siblings, Nicky’s greatest wish in life was to be a mother and raise a family. But endometriosis left her crippled with pain and dependent on pills that ultimately precipitated her end.

With Nicky’s tragic death, a chain reaction sets off among her sisters, each bound on her own path of misery and self-destruction. The eldest, Avery, who’s always been more of a mother to her sisters than their biological mother, has an affair that puts her marriage and comfortable life as a lawyer in London into jeopardy. Bonnie, who is two years younger than Avery, gives up on her career as a champion boxer and becomes a bouncer at a nightclub, only to end up in trouble. Then there is Lucky, the youngest, a flamboyant model who lives in the fast lane, utterly lost to addiction, cynicism and almost suicidal self-harm.

While Mellors braids the stories of the Blue sisters deftly, the weakest link in her narrative are the parents. All three surviving sisters harbour a visceral hatred of their mother, each accusing her of being unfeeling, cold-hearted and mean.

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In contrast, their father, yet another alcoholic with anger issues, gets a sketchier role in the story. No effort is spared to drive home his monstrosities—but he also never comes into the “present” of the narrative. Apart from somewhat generic flashbacks of his violent fits, he gets his moment at Nicky’s funeral, where he makes a rambling speech that leaves everyone in tears. You may be left wondering, with good reason, why he ends up getting a relatively free pass, in spite of being the main source of damage to his family.

As always, Mellors is riveting when she writes pow-wows. Be it siblings fighting bitterly with no restraint or chilled arguments between couples, she captures the tension in these scenes with the sharpness of an ace therapist. Although there are dollops of feel good strewn all along the story, the ending is, at best, just about happyish. Mellors leaves enough room for the blues to keep her characters and her readers both grounded.

Somak Ghoshal is a writer based in Delhi.