51 pages • 1 hour read
Betsy LernerShred Sisters
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Amy Shred
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of mental illness, illness, and death.
As the younger and more reliable Shred sister, Amy assumes the role of first-person narrator, archiving the events of her and her family’s lives. She grows up in a materially privileged household, but her family struggles to confront (rather than ignore) and accept (rather than judge) her older sister Ollie’s mental illness. Olivia’s situation becomes the defining feature around which the family organizes itself and by which Amy measures herself. Even in her own narration, Amy’s story is often sidelined by her accounts of Olivia, just as she herself is frequently overshadowed by Ollie’s outsized presence.
In most ways, the Shred sisters are opposites, and Amy, as the younger sister, cannot help but define herself in comparison to Ollie. While Ollie is outgoing, “daring and reckless” (19), Amy is introverted and cautious, “too slow and methodical for Ollie” (6). Amy is told that she is honest to a fault, while Ollie lies with ease. Amy prides herself on her academic success, while Ollie mocks her studiousness. Finally, while Ollie’s unpredictable behavior dominates the family dynamics and decisions, Amy tries to maintain a low profile. She is silently obedient, and her opinions are rarely sought. Thus, Amy struggles to establish her own identity, separate from her troubled sister, and this conflict is central to the novel’s exploration of Sisters as Opposites and Mirror Images.
Her sense of self is also beholden to her family, in general, and when her parents announce that they are getting a divorce, Amy’s identity is again disrupted. She packs up her room before she leaves for college, emptying it “of all personal effects, hoping to erase any trace of who [she] had been” (75). In the end, she opts to take only a handful of trinkets, tucked away in a shoebox, that reference her early life: As her parents divorce each other, Amy divorces herself. In consequence, she continues to struggle in her search for self-acceptance and fulfillment. Because her sense of worth is attached first to her familial role and then to her academic and professional success, Amy does not entirely trust her own ability to make independent decisions. Moreover, in erasing her earlier experiences, she creates an inauthentic version of herself, which compounds the problem, as the choices she makes under the guise of that persona do not address her genuine needs and desires.
Still, as the novel develops and Amy undergoes some difficult life experiences (the dissolution of her first marriage, the deaths of her parents, etc.), she begins to understand and trust her own mind, developing the theme of The Need for Authenticity in Understanding the Self. She also works with a therapist to overcome her issues with abandonment, stemming from Ollie’s unexplained absences and her parents’ preoccupation with her sister’s well-being. She slowly works toward forgiving her sister—and, concomitantly, forgiving herself—which is aided by the birth of her niece. In these acts of compassion, Amy finds herself, and she ultimately knows that “whatever [she does] next [is] up to [her]” (264). Her acceptance of responsibility for her own actions and her own future marks the completion of her character arc.
Olivia “Ollie” Shred
Ollie is very different from her sister, Amy, in part due to her mental illness. Ollie is impetuous and stubborn, and though her behavior sometimes garners admiration from her younger sister, it often impedes Amy’s development and sense of security. As the years go by, Ollie drifts from place to place, spending time in various psychiatric facilities in between her stays with various men. This pattern of behavior is enabled by her father, while her mother spends much of her time trying to deny that Ollie has an illness to treat. Amy, meanwhile, observes Ollie’s actions from a self-protective distance.
Ollie’s intelligence allows her to manipulate the family, as well as well-meaning caretakers, at least according to Amy: “I suspected that therapy was never going to cure Ollie. She would just learn how to game a new system” (55). Ollie also learns to mask her illness effectively, though as she matures, her behavior coalesces into predictable patterns, again according to Amy: “You could call it a pattern, though it was more of an algorithm: Ollie would steal something, smash something, cause a disturbance. She would get caught, cause a scene, crash” (96). Ollie has become adept at acting both for the sake of her family and for her own benefit and is able to escape the consequences of her actions, at least to a degree, for many years.
Still, as Amy matures, she begins to see Ollie in a more forgiving light, understanding that her impulsive behavior is not intended to hurt others. She also realizes that Ollie’s capacity for joy outstrips that of most people—particularly Amy, who spends too much time mired in the morass of cultural and familial expectations to embrace her own life. Ollie, on the other hand, has accepted her own experiences without apology. Amy eventually asks whether Ollie’s life might in some ways be more fulfilling than her own: “And who’s to say Ollie didn’t find her life satisfying? You could say she lived on her own terms, or you could dismiss her as mentally ill, the woman who continues to dance after the floor clears and the lights go down, listening to music only she can hear” (228). By granting Ollie agency, rather than treating her as an object to control, categorize, or pity, Amy finally acknowledges Ollie’s personhood.
At the same time, Ollie has herself evolved. Ollie ends the novel as a mother and a partner to Hunt, working to heal her relationship with her sister and receiving treatment for her mental illness. This underscores that Amy’s prior belief that her sister could never change was misguided, rooted in the resentments and anxieties of their childhood.
Lorraine Shred (Mom)
Mom is a loving, devoted mother with her own ideas about mental illness (namely, that no such illnesses actually exist), discipline, and family. She finds it difficult, if not impossible, to accept that her oldest daughter has a mental illness that may require treatment. Instead, Mom believes that Ollie’s defiant behavior is simply the byproduct of her father’s favoritism and her exceptional beauty; Ollie is used to getting her way, Mom thinks, and this enables unpredictable and hurtful behavior. Nevertheless, Mom loves her daughters—though her relationship with Amy is compromised by her focus on Ollie—and wants what is best for her family.
As an individual, Mom does not quite flourish. She depends on her marriage and her family for her sense of identity and never quite recovers from her separation from Ollie and Amy’s father: “[F]or her, divorce was a multi-layered exercise in humiliation” (78). She quits meeting with her married friends and spends much of her time in routinized loneliness. When Amy is to be married, Mom retrieves her old wedding dress, marveling at how it still fits her, though Amy can see the truth: “Mom plopped down on the chaise, suddenly distant, her victory hollow. Her slim figure wouldn’t win Dad back” (165). She puts her energy into her daughters and eventually begins seeing a widower—though she insists that they are merely friends—before she becomes ill with a brain tumor.
While Mom has her own set way of looking at life, with which neither Ollie nor Amy always agree, she is caring and committed to her family, and both of her daughters love her unconditionally. After Mom’s death, Amy notes that any time therapy was mentioned (mostly in the context of helping her make peace with the divorce), Mom would refuse, citing her unproductive experiences with Ollie. As Amy lovingly, if drily, puts it, “Mom had chosen the unexamined life and stuck with it to her dying day” (217). She thus represents a contrasting response to Familial Trauma and the Power of Forgiveness: Unlike her youngest daughter, Mom would rather not review the mixed results of the past.
Dad
Where Mom can be judgmental and brusque, Dad can be overly accommodating and even enabling, especially when it comes to Ollie. His marriage with Mom slowly unravels not only because of his affair with Anita but also because of his refusal to support Mom’s attempts to discipline Ollie: “Mom would beg our father for help, but he would downplay Ollie’s behavior, believing it was a phase that she would grow out of like a pair of shoes” (29). When it becomes clear that Ollie will not grow out of this phase, Dad simply ignores the worst of her behavior and helps her out whenever she asks: “For as long as he could, my father would rescue Olivia, bail her out, wire her money, take her to a different hospital, bring her home” (48-49). As with the rest of the family, Dad’s identity revolves around his wayward daughter.
Later, after Dad remarries, Amy observes that Dad’s intentions are not so much romantic as they are escapist: “The way I saw it, my father didn’t want a new wife so much as a new life. With Anita, he no longer had to face my mother’s accusations, her anger, frustration, and hopelessness. He could escape all those painful days” (89). Dad endeavors to avoid conflict at all costs, and he takes refuge in relocating to Florida and rebuilding a quieter life. Ollie still occupies a central position in his life—he gives her money and shelter whenever she asks—but his behavior does not come into question. While Mom denies Ollie’s condition out of a deeply held belief that mental illness does not exist, Dad denies Ollie’s condition out of a deeply held belief that his beautiful, track-star daughter can do no wrong. He lives long enough to see Ollie give birth to a baby girl, another daughter, which he undoubtedly sees as part of his legacy of unconditional caring.
