Sisters is the story of four young women coming of age on a rural property in northern Victoria. But it is also the story of Guthrie Carey, a young sailor whose life crosses paths with the sisters at various points. The perils and pitfalls of love and marriage dominate the story. It would seem that Cambridge had a pretty cynical view and very low expectations for happiness within the confines of marriage. We have an unhappy marriage with a power imbalance, a domestic goddess whose life is taken up with child bearing and child rearing, an adulteress, a nursemaid, a man still in love with his former wife’s ghost and a lonely old, man dreaming of a love that will never be!
If Sisters is a good representation of her work, I’ll definitely look for more. She doesn’t write as broadly or deeply as Henry Handel Richardson, but she does take on women’s concerns and class consciousness in a period when this wasn’t really the thing to do in writing. The conversation and descriptions in Sisters are fantastic. Particularly well-developed characters like Debbie and Carey will stay with me for a very long time.