In honor of National Sister’s Day, here are my top favourite books about sisters! As someone who has a fantabulous sister of her own, the books that I have chosen are all ones which feature sisters with caring and kind, complicated (and sometimes tumultuous), but ultimately loving relationships.
Here’s my list, from number five all the way to number one….
5. Pride and Prejudice
While Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice primarily focuses on Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy’s chaotic romance, it also tells the story of sisters. Although Mary, Kitty and Lydia are three of the silliest girls in England, Elizabeth and Jane’s relationship is definitely a caring and loving one. They have each others’ backs, are each other’s confidante and write letters back and forth when they are apart.
In the movie adaptation featuring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth, the movie even ended with a double wedding! Talk about the best kind of sisterly bond….
4. Little Women
Little Women is a story about sisters. Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy are the March sisters. Despite quarrels and falling through literal ice, illnesses and burnt hair, the March sisters are there for each other through it all.
My favourite relationship, beyond a doubt is that of Jo and Beth, for Jo nursed Beth night after night when the latter was ill with scarlet fever. It was definitely one of the most tragic and touching moments in the whole book.
3. By The Shores of Silver Lake
While Little House on the Prairie is arguably the most famous of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books, By The Shores of Silver Lake is one of the saddest, especially because it is based on Laura and her family’s real lives. At the start of the book, Laura explains that her older sister, Mary, has gone blind from scarlet fever.
Pa tells Laura that “she must be eyes for Mary”. Laura tries faithfully throughout the book to narrate everything that she sees for Mary, which is incredibly sad and touching at the same time. Their childhood did have some fights, but now that they were teenagers, they grew closer than ever before and almost never fought. While Laura did not face the same hardships that Mary did, she was always there for her, through thick and thin.
2. My Sister’s Keeper
My Sister’s Keeper is a story about sisters. Anna was created (literally by medical doctors) to be a donor for her older sister, Kate, who had acute promyelocytic leukemia, a blood and bone marrow cancer.
Originally, it was just supposed to be umbilical cord blood, then it turned into white blood cells, bone marrow and more, until she was finally supposed to donate a kidney. As a result, Anna seeks medical emancipation from her parents, wanting to finally have the choice about her own body.
One of the biggest plot twists in the novel is when it is revealed that the only reason Anna is seeking medical emancipation from her parents is because Kate is tired of living, tired of the constant treatments that never keep her in permanent remission. Despite winning her law case, Anna implies that she will give her sister a kidney anyway, thus proving that she will always be there for her sister, through thick and thin.
At the end of the novel, Anna happens to be in a fatal car accident and her lawyer allows her doctors to donate her organs, thus ensuring that Kate gets her sister’s kidney after all. In the end, the kidney ensures Kate’s remission and in the epilogue, Kate states that she “takes her sister with her everywhere she goes.”
1. The Hunger Games
The Hunger Games is one that does not initially appear to be about sisters, but on closer analysis, has one of the best sisterly relationships in fiction.
Katniss Everdeen volunteers for the Hunger Games in order to save her younger sister, Prim, who is selected at the reaping. Knowing full well that she could die and believing that she has no chance of winning the Games, she still chooses to volunteer to save her sister, who is the only person in the world whom she is truly sure she loves.
All five of these stories show the true loving and caring relationship between sisters. If you have a sister, hug them today and remember, friends who are as good as siblings are your family too!