The Neapolitan Sisters by Margo Candela is a character study on how culture and trauma shapes women. A dissection into the strained but loving family dynamic between three adult sisters who have long grown apart, the women are brought together again for the youngest’s wedding. As they spend time together in their childhood home the sisters’ separate lives become more enmeshed, mirroring their girlhood. Candela excels at painting clear portraits of each protagonist, all of whom glow with unique voices, views, and spirits while maintaining the unified characteristics of sisters raised in the same bedroom.
The novel opens on the youngest Maritza, on the cusp of 30 and determined to be married to her disinterested finance. Strong willed and opinionated, Maritza’s life working at a beverage company and living with her parents is contrasted by that of middle sister Claudia. The most successful of her family, Claudia is a movie producer buckling under the weight of her relationships, newly emerging health issues, and role as the surrogate head of the family. Claudia convinces their flighty and untethered eldest sister Ducina to travel in from San Francisco for the wedding, despite Ducina’s tense relationship with the family. Now a recovered alcoholic, Ducina sets out on a road trip home, intent on proving herself a newly self-sustainable woman.
The novel explores themes of renewal, with each sister having to contend and break out of the preconceived judgements they hold against each other as they begin to see one another in new light. The chapters alternate between their perspectives, which strengthen their identities as well-rounded characters. In comparison the novel’s extended cast, such as the sister’s parents, Claduia’s boyfriend, and Maritza’s fiance and his family, feel one dimensional in view of the protagonists. Often the side characters function as caricatured hurdles for the sisters to overcome—an overbearing mother, a jealous mother-in-law, a slimy finance—then as characters with internal lives and struggles. As a consequence, more morally ambiguous actions made by the protagonists are often left unmarred by deeper criticism by anyone but the sisters, causing their world to feel condensed to only their judgments and opinions.
While the sisters do contend with relationships outside of the ones they have with each other, the true love story of the novel is between the three women, whose distinct and often contrasting personalities find refuge in their unconditional love. The novel is at its best when the sisters are all together, capturing the wonderful playfulness of adult siblings’ habit of age regressing when together. Scenes of Maritza, Claudia, and Ducina crowded in their childhood bedroom as adults shine the brightest.
Overall, The Neapolitan Sisters succeeds as a love letter to sisterhood, womanhood, and the journey of breaking out of familial expectation. Biting and funny, it’s carried by its main trio of complex and unapologetic women.
“Overall, “The Neapolitan Sisters” succeeds as a love letter to sisterhood, womanhood, and the journey of breaking out of familial expectation. Biting and funny, it’s carried by its main trio of complex and unapologetic women.”
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Margo Candela was born and raised in Los Angeles and began her writing career when she joined Glendale Community College’s student newspaper. She transferred to San Francisco State University as a journalism major, and upon graduation began writing for websites and magazines before writing her first two novels, Underneath It All and Life Over Easy. She returned to Los Angeles to raise her son and wrote More Than This and Good-bye to All That. The Neapolitan Sisters is her fifth novel and her first after a decade-long hiatus from writing. She now lives in San Francisco. Learn more at MargoCandela.com.
Nikkia Rivera is a writer living in Brooklyn, New York. She has previously been published in Thriller Magazine and Scarlet Leaf Magazine.
