Sisterhood Everlasting

April 11, 2011
Brashares revives the Traveling Pants sisterhood for a bittersweet victory lap that finds the sisters grown up and pretty much out of contact until Tibby, who now lives in Australia, proposes a reunion in Greece, where Lena has a family home and a lost love, Kostos. But what begins as a great idea turns tragic when Tibby drowns and letters she left behind hint it may not have been an accident. Brashares creates a sensitive panorama of grief in following how the friends react to loss: Carmen, now a television actress, throws herself into planning her expensive wedding, though she doesn't really connect with her icy fiancé. Bridget leaves her boyfriend to travel around California. Loner Lena reaches out to Kostos in a long-shot effort to rekindle what they had. And while each fears their friendship won't survive the distance between them or Tibby's death, they remain in one another's thoughts, even if they don't interact for most of the novel. Brashares freshens the well-worn tropes of chasing hopeless love and being honest with yourself with a prose that surprises despite its straightforward tone ("Effie wouldn't leave her alone. She would crawl into Lena's precious quiet like a tapeworm"). Series fans might be dismayed that the sisterhood's broken up, but Brashares proves that, even in death, this series has plenty of life left in it.

April 1, 2011

Having turned to adult fiction (My Name is Memory, 2010, etc.), Brashares offers what may or may not be a closing novel to her popular Traveling Pants series.

Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood (2007) ended almost a decade ago as Lena, Carmen, Bridget and Tibby completed their freshman year of college. Now approaching 30, the four friends have hit troubled waters, individually and as a group. In fact, they are barely in touch with each other. In San Francisco, Bridget avoids committing to sensitive immigration lawyer Eric (whose patience is the book's great mystery). Lena lives alone in self-proclaimed poverty and isolation in Providence, where she also teaches at RISD, but her heart still belongs to her lost Greek love Kostos. With a weekly gig on a TV police drama, Carmen's acting career has taken off and she is engaged to an ABC executive nobody else likes. The three have not heard much from Tibby since she moved to Australia with her boyfriend Brian several years ago. Then out of the blue, Tibby sends tickets for a reunion on the Greek island of Santorini, where they have already shared so much. Lena, Carmen and Bridget are thrilled as they gather. But tragedy strikes: Tibby drowns before she sees them, and the women suspect suicide. Devastated, they return to their separate lives and stop communicating. But Tibby has left each a mysterious package with a letter asking for another gathering on April 2. Her force of will influence her friends to make the right decisions to find happiness. Carmen must find a way to be true to herself. Bridget must find purpose in her life and get over her fear of commitment. Lena must find a way not to fear love. The ending leaves just enough romantic wiggle room for one more installment.

"Pants" fans who have grown up with the girls and love them will no doubt overlook the improbabilities, unrealized characters and plot manipulations to make this a bestseller.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

January 1, 2011

It's been ten years since Brashares published The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, launching a phenomenon. Now, after four books and two movies, our heroines--Carmen, Tibby, Bridget, and Lena--are adults living far apart but still in need of one another. That's why Europe-based Tibby facilitates a rendezvous on the Greek isle of Santorini, where a surprise puts their friendship to a test. The publisher is betting that teenage fans of this series, now adults, are set to carry on. If that's true, this should be big. A ten-city tour.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.