The Gilly Salt Sisters: A Novel

Slow. Heavy handed. Didn't make me care about the characters. Good idea but poor execution. The author tries to be lyrical but it just feels forced.

Tiffany Baker is a terrific writer! I read sentences in this book which gave me a tingle when I came across them and I knew Baker is good. For example: "Jo stood up and clattered the cups together, then dangled her hands by her sides, letting all her regrets bear down on her as sure and unstoppable as a millstone about to crush bone." And: "Before she could think too hard about that, however, she moved, breaking the image into pieces and scattering the doubtful part of her back into the rain, leaving behind only a solitary pane of glass, unreflective in the autumn gloom."Good, eh?There is a lot of terrific and subtle symbolism throughout as well, the biggest being the salt marshes which surround and trap the Gilly sisters in its opaque muck, life giving and smothering at the same time. Jo loves the marshes as much as her sister Claire hates them. When Mama dies, Jo stays to continue drying the salt out of the ocean water for a living, while Claire grabs the first opportunity to leave the family farm and forget everything and everybody about her family. However, neither can avoid each other completely in the small Cape Cod village of Prospect after Claire marries the richest man in town, Whit Turner, and moves into his mansion a few miles outside of Prospect (a metasymbolic name, I think). But Turner's secret passion as well as a pact made by the Gilly's mother decades before unravels the estrangement in time.Stirring their unsettled anxieties is a lack of certainty whether the sisters practice a witchcraft of foretelling the future or if the salt can give its possessors a clarity, which seemed similar to the thought experiment about Schrödinger's cat, where a cat, a container of poison, and something radioactive are placed in a sealed box. If radioactivity is detected (i.e. a single atom decaying), the container shatters. The poison kills the cat. Quantum mechanics says the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. Yet, when one looks in the box, one sees the cat either alive or dead, not both alive and dead, depending on when quantum superposition ends and reality collapses into one possibility or the other. (Thank you Wikipedia.) Something about Baker's description of what the town believes about buying the salt reminded me of this experiment. Apparently the salt can catalyze the future, collapsing the possibilities and focusing fate.The writing is fabulous and promises much. The plot, at first, also promises to lead to either a deep exploration of the human condition or a romance in the old fashioned sense of the 19th century type, using current terminology and set in the present. However, to me, the story unexpectedly went pfffffft! like a balloon slowly emptying of air, mostly because it starts out with the impression of being a LARGE metafiction, but instead it ends up being, 'well that's life, isn't it?' We start out sure we're meant for great things due to mystical omens which point in certain directions and family predictions, but it turns out maybe the future is not so much about fate, or even if it is fate, s*** happens, and it's a smaller world and less important than you thought and there you are.It's still a decent read. The writing is definitely five star. However the plot and the characters do not live up to the magic created by the words. Jo makes the most consistent strong impression on me and rings true. The way the small village functions also felt real to me.Spoiler alert!But Claire makes no sense at all, killing people as if she is a psychopath. She is treated by the author as if she is merely an immature and willful girl, a thoughtless being who is too impulsive. Really? I didn't think so. I suppose she was fulfilling the role of 'Force of Nature' or 'the gods' - a Nemesis - who haphazardly determine the fate of our protagonists, much like the characters' fates in 'The Iliad' were determined by the wagering Greek gods gambling on who would survive the sword fights around Troy. Claire functions like a pair of dice, tossed into the occasional storm winds which blew in from the ocean.In the end, I was a little disappointed - the mysteries turned out to be meh, the bad guys were a touch too dumb to be a terrible source of anxiety and the magic wasn't as potent as advertised.I guess that IS life, isn't it?

The advertising for this book is all wrong. I thought this would be a summery beachy read from the preview. Nope. This is daaaaark dark dark. Did I mention dark? I chose this as a book club read and only one of our club had a positive experience. The rest of us were put off by waylaid preconceptions. I put that squarely on the marketing, not the author.What I liked: I always love to learn something in a book and in this one I learned about salt farming. The descriptions of the town and the Massachusetts coast were beautiful--I've been there and could picture towns I've visited with their weathered weariness facing down the salty water and wind. Beautifully done.The characters... interesting. I found no characters to like. I really wanted to like somebody and just didn't. Anytime I started to empathize with a character they up and did something I couldn't get past.Let me just say again--DARK. If that's what you are in the mood to read, you will probably enjoy this. I couldn't.

Though it is beautifully written, I had a little trouble with the timeline and with the characters reaction to certain things. Building up the character one way and then having them react in a completely different manner with no explanation had me thumbing back through pages thinking I had misread.Make no mistake, the Gilly sisters are interesting characters and the town is sprinkled with interesting characters though I do wish some of the ones we were introduced to had more coverage.I gave this book three stars because it is beautifully written, I just wish someone had pointed out to Ms. Baker some inconsistencies in timeline and in character development.

After reading Bakers first book, The Giant of Auberdine County, I waited impatiently for a 2nd read. Baker writes with such a flare, her words are like music. Her descriptive text makes me bend my head ...thinking I never thought of that, but of course...what a beautiful way to describe something. Her wording dances in my head. You've got to read her books. Hopefully her 3rd book won't be far away. Baker you are an incredible talent. I have recommended her to every reader I know.