'Antoine, 13 years old, is on holiday at the seaside with his parents and his younger brother, Titi. Both spend most of their time drawing, at restaurants and on the beach. One night, Antoine discovers another person lying in their bedroom. Helene is 16 years old; she and her mother came to spend a few days and her presence and behaviour will change Antoine's life.'
A Sister follows thirteen year old Antoine as he and his family travel to their cottage by the coast to spend their summer holiday away from the distractions of home. On the drive there Antoine overhears his parents talking about a friend of the family has just had a miscarriage. When asking his parents about it Antoine learns that his own mother miscarried before he was born, and that he could have had an older brother or sister.
Once at their holiday home the family settles into their routine of spending time at the beach, playing games around the house, and visiting the local village to shop and eat out at restaurants. Antoine spends much of his time with his younger brother Titi, and the two of them get along well. One morning, however, Antoine wakes up to find a girl asleep in their room. It turns out that his parents invited their friend and her daughter, Helene, to the holiday home to unwind after her miscarriage.
Now, from here, thanks to the title and the idea supplanted into our heads thanks to that first conversation in the book about Antoine missing out on an older sibling I thought that this would be where the book was going to go, that Helene, three years older than Antoine, was going to end up becoming something of an older sister to Antoine. This isn't really what happens, as Antoine and Helene develop a sexual relationship over the course of the summer.
The book is marketed as a 'coming of age- story, but I don't really see that myself, there's not much that happens to Antoine over the course of the book that makes him mature or change as a person other than him discovering sex; but perhaps that was what Bastien Vives was going for, that becoming sexually active is a coming of age. Other than performing sexual acts with Helene Antoine ends the book very much how he began, as a thoughtful and caring person, one who doesn't seem to want to bow to peer pressure. There is a moment towards the end of the book where Antoine almost does something incredibly stupid because he's being goaded into it by some older kids, but chooses not to; but this doesn't feel like any kind of growth, more that Antoine is being true to the person he was at the beginning of the book.
I don't know if Vives was trying to put a message into this book, and can't help but feel like if he was I must have missed out on it, because it just came across as a story about a thirteen year old boy being groomed by a sixteen year old over the course of a summer, encouraged into performing sexual acts that he did not seem ready for at all.
The artwork is fairly simple throughout, with a somewhat messy art style that uses black and white shading instead of colour. It took me a while to get used to this, but after a few pages I didn't really notice how different the artwork was from other books, and just settled into the story. But if you're looking for a book that's going to wow you with its art, or that you can spend your time looking through just soaking up the artwork this might not be the right book for you.
Overall I enjoyed A Sister, but I couldn't really narrow down why. Nothing much really happens in the story, there's content there that didn't make complete sense, and the artwork didn't wow me, but I read it through in one sitting and never felt bored whilst doing so. This might not be a book for everyone, but it's one that I'd definitely say to give a go.
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