Louisa and Clem (short for Clement) are sisters who are just too different to be really close. Louisa is an art critic, and Clem is a wildlife conservationist. We follow their adult lives for 25 years via alternating narrators to get a sense of who they are. Clem is more vivacious and attractive than her older sister, and her adventures have led to accidents on at least three occasions where her parents have had to bear the trauma of notifications by the police. Ultimately, a life-changing event occurs in each sister's life. For Louisa, it is breast cancer, which renders her unable to bear children. For Clem, it is the discovery that a grizzly cub has a heart defect. There are two schools of thought among Clem's colleagues. One faction believes that we should let nature run its course. After all, even if cardiac surgery is successful, the bear will pass the defect on to his progeny. Clem, on the other hand, can't bear to see the cub fall farther and farther behind in his development until he attracts the attention of some other predator. The outcome of this dilemma is just as devastating to Clem as cancer is to Louisa. I can't really put my finger on why I enjoyed this book so much, but I had pretty much the same reaction to Three Junes. Certainly, the writing is sublime, but also the arrival and departure of myriad friends and lovers—no two alike—and the mortifying quips tossed out by the sisters' domineering mother keep things rolling. The gimmick Glass uses here is quite effective as well. The book consists of seemingly incomplete snippets, separated in time by months or years, whose outcomes are revealed later in an indirect fashion, as though we already knew what had happened during the gaps. It's sort of like watching a soap opera where you've missed a few episodes that become less and less critical.
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