TLC Book Tours: The Quintland Sisters by Shelley Wood
Title: The Quintland Sisters
Author: Shelley Wood
Format: ARC
Publisher: William Morrow
Publish Date: March 5, 2019
Source: TLC Book Tours and HarperCollins
What's the Story?:
From Goodreads.com: "Reluctant midwife Emma Trimpany is just 17 when she assists at the harrowing birth of the Dionne quintuplets: five tiny miracles born to French farmers in hardscrabble Northern Ontario in 1934. Emma cares for them through their perilous first days and when the government decides to remove the babies from their francophone parents, making them wards of the British king, Emma signs on as their nurse.
Over 6,000 daily visitors come to ogle the identical “Quints” playing in their custom-built playground; at the height of the Great Depression, the tourism and advertising dollars pour in. While the rest of the world delights in their sameness, Emma sees each girl as unique: Yvonne, Annette, Cécile, Marie, and Émilie. With her quirky eye for detail, Emma records every strange twist of events in her private journals.
As the fight over custody and revenues turns increasingly explosive, Emma is torn between the fishbowl sanctuary of Quintland and the wider world, now teetering on the brink of war."
My 4 Star Review
My Two Cents:
"The Quintland Sisters" tells the story of the Dionne quintuplets, a famous set of siblings born in Canada in the 1930s. While quintuplets are still not common, they were really not common back then as this was well before the age of fertility interventions like IVF and the like. The Dionne sisters become celebrities of a sort almost from the time that they were born.
If you've followed my reviews or my blog for any length of time, you may know that I have twin girls. They are identical and we get a lot of attention when we go out. I can't begin to imagine what it would be like to have quintuplets and the uproar that it would still cause today. The Dionne family had people parking outside of their home waiting to catch a glimpse of the babies napping. Even from their earliest days, the Dionne sisters' lives are strange. I liked how the author was able to capture the uproar that constantly seems to thrum in the background of the girls' lives.
I liked that the book was narrated by Emma, a nurse whose first taste of nursing comes from helping to deliver the Dionne girls. She loves these girls and is protective of them as much as she can be. I really enjoyed seeing things through her eyes. We see as the girls' lives are upended over and over again throughout the book. People like Emma become some of the only constants that they had.
I felt so bad for the Dionne quintuplets throughout the book. You have to wonder what not having much of a childhood and constantly being on display must have been like. The book certainly gives us a taste of that and made for an enjoyable albeit sad read.