Book Review: Sunset, Jessie Cave

 Book Review: Sunset, Jessie Cave

Read: 17/05 - 04/06/2023 

My rating: 5 /5 stars

Book of 2023: 5 

ONE SUMMER CAN CHANGE ANYTHING 

Ruth and Hannah are sisters. Bonded by love and friendship, they are perplexingly different characters. 

Hannah is radiant, organised and hard-working. Ruth is forever single and totally aimless. Together they are invincible. 

Every summer they go on a budget holiday together where they bicker, laugh, fight and make up. 

But this time is different. Something bad happens. And now everything is changed forever.    

Immediately you’re thrown into the deep end of an intensely deep, well-established narrator that you can really sink your teeth into. Cave’s ability to show you a broken character that you understand so securely, immediately, is astounding. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m also a little sister, but I knew Ruth straight away. This character is so clear from the start, despite being unpredictable & fragmented throughout. You’re given the sisters to swirl in your glass & inhale & glug & you’re drunk on such rich storytelling. 

Cave has you flit between before & after Hannah’s accident from the off. You know it’s going to happen, but you’re shown the sisters as sisters before you’re shown Ruth as a newly sisterless sister. I think the power of the story, & the part that is so gut-wrenching, is that Ruth is never really sisterless, even when she is. 

‘I watch her crying in amazement. I’m the sister. I’m the sister.’ (66)

Hannah never leaves the narrative; we return to the sisters as children, as adults navigating the world together, & even when Ruth is decidedly on her own, Hannah stays central. That’s the part that feels so magical, & is so touching: even without her sister, she is never truly without her. 

The dynamic that develops between Rowan & Ruth is one that is on its surface, shocking, but in context is one which truly makes sense. The two are drawn to each other, pulled together in grief, pulled together by the love they have for Hannah, that they don’t know what to do with. 

Cave is a master of the word. Crafting sentences that pull you to shreds, phrases which lift you up, a cadence of a character so deeply in pain that you cannot help but feel it too. 

This book transported me to a world without my sister, a guide, someone to look up to. To a world where all at once the one light in Ruth’s life has gone out. It’s brutal to read, harrowing, ugly & real. Cave is writing from a first-hand experience of grief, but she’s able to capture it so beautifully. Showing us the reality of losing someone you love, whilst showing a true love of writing, of story, of character. It’s breath-taking. 

I can only hope to create something so full of life & death & love & hope & sadness & heavy heavy pain. 

So incredibly heartfelt and alive and moving. A true love letter to the bond of sisterhood. I loved every single page. An elegantly written novel about the un-elegant nature of grief, love, adulthood, relationships, family. 

I proudly cried in multiple different public places while devouring its pages. 

Beautiful, heartbreaking, raw. Disturbing. Eye-opening. A reminder to embrace the world, embrace chaos, love people deeply, make friends everywhere you go, and always only sleep with the people you like, who like you back. 

I love this story. I will return.