The Gilly Salt Sisters

Stories of intricate family relationships and secrets are usually very interesting to me, but the pacing dragged so much at times that my attention frequently lagged. Overall, a pretty good story, with fairly complex personalities and an interesting setting. The male characters were the main weakness - the author mostly dwelled on the female characters, so the guys were mostly in place as two dimensional plot drivers.

Audiobook, borrowed from my public library via Overdrive. Angela Brazil's narration was serviceable, but her tendency to care-full-y e-nun-ci-ate her words was distracting.

The setting for this bizarre novel is the remote New England village of Prospect in some ill-defined time period. Going by technology, my best guess for the time period is the somewhere between 1950 and 1980. But the general action of the plot seems to be plucked from the Middle Ages. For one thing, the titular sisters, are considered pariahs and maybe witches by most of the town. The Gilly family has harvested salt from the marshes on their farm for generations. And this, frankly fantastically archaic career is not once commented upon. Everyone in town buys the salt, and the fishermen swear by it. Everyone has a low-key awe and vague superstition about the "powers" this salt possess.

Jo and Claire are all that's left of the most recent show more Gilly generation and they are very different. Jo is committed to her family's legacy and is determined to remain on the farm. Claire is primarily a lazy girl who wants to get married to her high school sweetheart and move away from Prospect. Most of the movement of the plot revolves around the tensions between these two sisters. Jo wants Claire to remain at home and help her with the salt harvest and Claire wants to get away. Ultimately, this conflict culminates in a barn fire started by a heartbroken Claire when her boyfriend joins the priesthood. Jo is badly burned in the fire saving Claire's life. Claire decides the best thing to do is marry Jo's old boyfriend (the richest man in town) and move away.

The two exchange cruel (and insane) pranks over the next ten years. Jo defaces the Virgin Mary in the local chapel to send Claire "a message" on her wedding day. Claire tells the entire town that Jo's salt is poison. Haha, sisters, am I right?

Many years pass and Jo is struggling to make ends meet on the farm. Claire has bullied the entire town into not eating Jo's salt - and in some cases into not eating at all? I guess Claire is like the queen of mean girls? Because her husband is rich she's the chair of all the local volunteer clubs. And her whole thing is she's mean to everyone and they're all afraid of her. I just... don't understand what her influence is? If it's a class thing, she literally comes from the f-ing swamp, so all those society ladies should be looking down on her. But her position in town is more characteristic of a medieval lady visiting the peasants and tenant farmers on her property. They all just scurry around doing her bidding and afraid of her cruel looks.

All this only gets more complicated by the fact that Claire's husband is constantly trying to buy the salt marsh from Jo. I guess the head of the Turner clan thinks that owning the salt will ... make him successful again? Not sure in what universe purchasing a failing business makes you successful? This is never explained. But Claire's husband only married her because he thought he'd get half the farm when Claire's mother died. But the will was changed and he didn't. So now he is obsessed with getting Jo to sell it to him. But... the whole reason he thinks (insanely) that he needs the salt farm is because he's basically broke. Throughout the whole book he's selling the china, the silver, unused furniture, etc. So, what is he even going to buy the swamp with? And how is his (non-existent) money buying him influence with local law enforcement and politicians (which is the lever for several crucial plot points)? When it comes right down to it, what exactly is his actual job? He does nothing all day but harass Jo and complain that his wife hasn’t managed to give him a son and heir yet. Dude, you need to have something to leave behind before you need an heir. Get serious.

Anyway, this dirt bag husband of Claire's starts banging a teenage girl who recently moved to town. She gets pregnant and then he tries to kill her, because he doesn’t want his “reputation” to suffer. Claire catches him in the act, clocks him with a shovel, and decides to move back home with Jo and her husband's pregnant mistress. Jo and Claire reconcile and Claire becomes a salt wizard. She adds spices to it and uses it to cook and everyone in the whole town is crazy for the cookies and muffins and stuff she makes. Also she decides to tell everyone that the salt isn’t poison anymore. Naturally, everyone is cool with that. Yay.

Too bad they're still going bankrupt. Claire’s mom took out a second mortgage to send Claire to school and they owe the bank a ton of money. Also Jo turns out to be the child of a Turner and her old boyfriend is actually her brother (yuck). I guess her mother had an affair with the priest and got pregnant. She wouldn’t let the priest give up his position for her so she gave her baby to Claire’s mom instead? You know how these village women just swap their babies at the drop of a hat! Jo's not a Gilly at all!!! But, whatever, no one cares really. Anyhow, they decide to try to blackmail Claire's husband to let them keep the swamp. I guess they figure when he finds out his mother was making it with the town priest he'll be really embarrassed? So they set up this big meeting to reveal the secret, but when the day comes, Claire just decides to burn him alive instead. Oh, that wacky Claire! She’s so wild and impulsive! Murder will solve this problem! And it does! Take a lesson, kids.

Claire burns down the old salt barn (AGAIN) this time with her husband inside. Lucky for the plot, her husband's mistress is also inside so that's two inconvenient characters cleaned up in one go. Don’t worry, the mistress already had her baby and Claire and Jo adopt it. The police (idiots) rule that the fire was caused by lightning. They don’t think it’s weird that Claire’s two worst enemies died together in the fire and Claire has a history of burning THAT EXACT building down. Go figure.

Also, Claire’s ex-sweetheart turned priest comes back to Prospect and IMMEDIATELY bangs Claire breaking, like, every single commandment? Whatever, I guess? Later, he leaves the priesthood and becomes a fisherman and marries her. They raise her murdered husband’s illegitimate child together. Beautiful, right?

The author just won’t stop their though. In a whirlwind final chapter, she recounts how Jordan grows up on the swamp not knowing who his father was or how his mother died. Jo and Claire decide to wait until his eighteen birthday. They give him a letter that basically says, “We’ve been lying to you for your entire life! Also, sorry I murdered your parents!” Don’t worry, Jordan is cool with it. So he grows up, gets married, has a daughter, wife dies of cancer, and then he moves back to Prospect! Hurrah, isn’t it great when spouses die at just the right moment? Jo and Claire teach the young girl to harvest salt, and one assumes, to murder people with fire. The circle is complete! show less

A somber but not depressing piece of magical realism. The story's magic is really a rather mundane prophetic side-bar that moves the main story along - salt. The main story is about redemption, history, and family change over time. While sad, the story never lags into melancholy bleakness and remains delightfully bittersweet and hopeful right until the end. The overall conflict of the book is pragmatic - cursed perception vs. blessed, home safety vs. feral freedom, family vs. strangers, love vs. security. All with the specter of one mythical hell-storm of a night that left the taste of salt on the tongues of two families and their descendants.

The story was predictable in a sense that the author didn't bother hiding the ending. It was show more there for you to see it if you wanted to focus. But the predictability didn't take away from the writing and the development. In a "journey over the destination" sort of way it was pleasant.

Two early images really sold me on this book and encouraged me to finish - the image of a faceless and evolving Virgin Mother statue(at both eerie and peaceful)and the controlling power of the salt over those in the town. show less

2.5 So. much. narration. This could have been half the length and would've been a more compelling book. It has some cool magic-y elements and girl power and superstitious Catholic practices (Our Lady of the Salt) kind of like Secret Life of Bees, but goes overboard on description and covering the length of time that the story spans. Except the last 2 chapters which fast-forward about 18 years. The Gilly sisters, Jo and Claire were raised on the salt marsh outside the town of Prospect on Cape Cod. The marsh is not kind to men/boys - a family curse of some kind, so it is just the girls and their hard-working, no-nonsense mother. The salt has some magical properties and the town seems to have a love/hate relationship as they believe their show more fate is tied to it. The nemesis to the Gilly girls is the Turner family, handsome Whit who is Jo's age and his spiteful mother, Ida. But there are secrets there. Eventually, over a lot of time (and narration) Claire and Whit marry after her true love Ethan becomes a priest. Whit believes he can finally own the marsh and dominate the town, but it doesn't work out that way. Instead Claire and Jo have a falling out and work against each other. All this history comes to light mostly through the lens of newcomers teenage Dee and her jerk of a father Cut. They open a diner in town and don't get any customers until they start serving Gilly salt. Dee is only 17 and needy and curious so gets a little snoopy about the Gilly sisters and all the town dynamics. She also gets involved with Whit which sets a whole other layer of story in motion. It's one of those saga books, but I felt like it didn't need to be. show less

The Gilly Salt Sisters takes place in a small New England town similar, if not just, Falmouth...near Woods Hole. Of course the original New England colonies were not only populated by puritans and those pious believers in the straight and narrow path, but they were seasoned by island peoples...slaves from the Caribbean, from Africa and from other exotic places where superstition and "witchcraft," magical and mystical things followed them. These characteristics were met with the same that underpined some of those who fled England and Scotland, as well. In Massachusettes, Salem had experienced the witch trials...the areas of Cape Cod and up as far as Gloucester were aware of these things. The people of New England don't easily forget~it's show more in their blood. Who wouldn't be influenced by the Gilly Salt Sisters?

In this novel (and in actuality, as a matter of fact) the salt's unique properties, historic and mystical to begin with, were given a reverence~they were fraught with healing powers, the power to keep and preserve foods and meats, originally the power to exchange like money, to season cooked foods; and, quite mysteriously to change the well-being of businesses and the over all climates of the town. Only the Gilly family and specifically the Gilly women were capable of handling the harshness of the salt marsh, harvesting it and controlling the delivery of the salt throughout the town and region. They were afforded a sort of begruding prominence and fearsomeness in town. Their ability to throw their own bag of salt into the yearly, autumn bonfire to predict the future of the town in a sort of ancient festival, solidified the superstition and mysticism that surrounded them; that made them weird and outcast.

Within this confine of prejudice and their wild, muddy marsh of a farm life, Jo and Claire Gilly grew up and struggled with their fates along with their single mother. They are marvelous characters as different as Cain and Able. Jo the Abel of the two: dark-haired, faithful to the marsh and salt, protective of loved ones, strong and rough around the edges. And, Claire; the Cain, weak in spirit, red-haired and tempermental, selfish, working to tear down the salt and all it represents in the town and to her past. Gloriously well developed characters that stand up in realism. So real in fact, that you believe they're actual people.

Throughout the book we find abberations in the tale, however, that changes all perceptions. The men and women involved with the Gillys aren't always what they appear to be and the lives of the Gillys and townspeople overlap in a multitude of ways. All this causing their histories to intersect for good and for bad. This is a story rich in family dynamics of love and betrayal, mystery and revelation, mysticism and romance. The sea and the marshes that hem them in play against the gothic themes an cause the book to take on a dark tone...so like Poe in some instances.

Tiffany Baker knows how and when to pull the strings that deepen our connections with her characters and the momentum surrounding the Gilly Salt Sisters. The spector of mystery and revelation hangs before us as she builds and hints and drops us through Jo's discoveries. But even as the other charcters are brought in and layers are developed, we still remain in the dark until the climax of the book.

I love this kind of mystery mixed with a grand and sweeping tale of a family that mysteriously winds its way through a history. A family unwittingly repeating itself until somehow it finally finds a way to break the bond that held it captive. And through that freshly broken wound restores something of itself through a healing, a new trust, a new love and life of hope. Even though grief and punishment remain behind. Even though some of the connections are thin and come from wild roots.

The Gilly Salt Sisters is a great book in the order of a sort of Jane Smiley's "Thousand Acres," but I think it's richer and it's dug into more detail. I loved the book and hope you get a chance to read it very soon!

5 stars!!

Deborah/TheBookishDame show less

This book was somewhat of a slow read. Jo's character is the most interesting, her history the most colorful, but I felt the book focuses a lot on Claire. I was hoping for a lot more growth and redemption from her, but that didn't happen. She tolerated Dee, so she could get her baby, and then tried to redeem her conscience by risking losing "her" son, by telling him the truth when the time is right.

It's also very focused on Whit, and his entanglement with the sisters, as well as his position in the town. He's a hollow character and a jerk, so his path in the story is no surprise. Overall, this was a pretty bland story, much like the unsalted food Claire needed so much.

It was fun to read a book with a familiar, Cape Cod setting. The writing is lovely, and the characters are well developed. I just didn't find any of them loveable. The ending seemed rushed, and I was left unsatisfied that the skeletons stayed locked in the closet (trying to say something that isn't a spoiler).