As long as she can remember, it's been Nicola and her sister Viv against the world. Abandoned by their parents. the two raised themselves—and they turned out pretty well: Viv is a surgeon and Nicola a working artist.
26-year-old Nicola would have said she knew her charismatic older sister better than anyone, but when a car accident leaves Viv widowed and unconscious, Nicola discovers that Viv has been concealing one astonishing secret after another.
Waiting for Viv to waken, Nicola must untangle the web of truth and lies about their family's past while trying to navigate their future in this compelling story about sisters and secrets, and the awful choices that can redefine the entire shape of a family.
As long as she can remember, it's been Nicola and her sister Viv against the world. Abandoned by their parents. the two raised themselves—and they turned out pretty well: Viv is a surgeon and Nicola a working artist.
26-year-old Nicola would have said she knew her charismatic older sister better than anyone, but when a car accident leaves Viv widowed and unconscious, Nicola discovers that Viv has been concealing one astonishing secret after another.
Waiting for Viv to waken, Nicola must untangle the web of truth and lies about their family's past while trying to navigate their future in this compelling story about sisters and secrets, and the awful choices that can redefine the entire shape of a family.
STARTINGÂ when we were little, my sister made a habit of waking me in the middle of the night.
“Get up!” she’d hiss, the ends of her long hair tickling my face as she leaned over me. “Wake up, sleepyhead! It’s time to go. Right now.” She’d yank the covers away and push a gym bag at me, her voice quiet and urgent in the dark. “Get your things.”
Five minutes later, the time exact by her watch, I’d be in the field behind the house.
She’d examine what I was wearing: blue jeans, a chambray shirt, a windbreaker. She’d ask me about what I had packed. The meager list—my pencils and a sketchbook, a piggy bank, a jack-knife, my birth certificate, some underwear, a sweater, photographs, a flashlight, socks—was never quite right.
“You don’t need the flashlight,” she’d tell me. “And just pick a small sketchbook if you have to bring one at all. It’s not essential. You can always make more pictures.”
Her voice was hushed but full of excitement.
“How much money do you have? Did you remember your birth certificate? What would you eat? Next time make sure to pack something to keep you going, like candy or raisins.”
That was my sister, Vivian Marguerite Jones, at twelve, at fifteen, standing tall in the moonlight, with an army-surplus rucksack slung over one shoulder. “Alright then, if we had to make a run for it right now— where would you go first?”
I went through the drill again: where we would meet, what we would do if we got separated, if our parents got arrested, if someone were chasing us, if things got really bad.
After a few minutes, I’d tiptoe back up the kitchen stairs while Viv climbed hand-over-hand up the rope she’d rigged out her window. She went up fast, as quiet as smoke.
IN THOSEÂ days before our parents left for good, we stayed in rented farmhouses in Vermont, New Hampshire, New York. We moved often, usually without much warning. Viv and I changed schools at least once a year. We packed up one April and I never finished second grade at all.
My sister and I weren’t permitted to go to sleepovers or birthday parties. We couldn’t invite friends over to visit, and when we moved, we were not allowed to write to anyone.
Viv and I wore homemade gingham dresses to school because our father thought girls should look like girls. We talked funny and we didn’t make friends easily. We rarely had access to television. People thought we were stuck up.
Our parents left us alone in the houses, traveling for weeks at a time for my father’s work. On cold evenings when we were left alone in a creaking old farmhouse, Viv would lead the way down the wooden staircase to the kitchen and tell me to make hot cocoa. She’d check my measurements, police my technique, and remind me to wash the pan before leaving the kitchen. When she was impatient, she’d make the cocoa herself and bring a cup to me.
One night, she stalked into my room unannounced, two mugs steaming in the chilly upstairs air. “Here,” she said, thumping the cocoa down on the dresser next to my bed. She never seemed to spill no matter how she crashed dishes around. She never scalded the milk when it heated, even over a wood stove. On her, a flannel nightgown looked long and elegant.
Viv perched on the sagging mattress and pulled the sketchbook out of my hands. “What if Magda and Jahn don’t make it back this time?” She always referred to our parents by name.
“They’ll come back!” I said, even as I wondered whether her saying so might make disaster strike.
“What if they don’t?” she persisted, her eyes squinting to mean little slits. “What if Jahn’s truck runs off the road and they get killed dead?”
I felt a prickling deep inside my nose, a panicky burn in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t dare to blink in case the tears started.
“Well?” she said. “Figure it out, Nicky.”
After a moment she relented, sipping her cocoa and pulling a face at me. “Better to think about it now when it hasn’t happened than to be surprised later.”
My sister taught me everything I knew back then. She taught me how to tie my shoes and she made sure I finished my homework. When she shook me awake in the middle of the night and said, “It’s time to get out of here,” I got up and went because it was how she helped me get ready for the world.
Amy Smith Linton’s She Taught Me Everything opens with a woman named Nicola Jones receiving the call that her sister Vivian has been in a car accident and is unconscious in the hospital. Left to take care of her sister’s affairs while she waits for Vivian to wake up, Nicola begins to discover one secret after another that Vivian had been hiding from her. Looking back on moments from their shared childhood to try and piece things together, Nicola attempts to find the truth while reflecting on all the little (and big) things that shaped her and her relationship with her sister.
This novel was incredibly compelling. Linton’s descriptions are particular in that they are concise and to-the-point while still being incredibly specific and evocative. I found her ability to paint a full portrait of a character from little descriptions of their mannerisms to be skillful and effective. No detail in this story was forgotten, and simultaneously, no description felt like a throwaway or filler. Each and every description contributed to the progression of the story and the development of the characters.
Linton also managed to progress the story in varied, yet efficacious ways. I found the use of the phone calls in the story to progress Nicola’s understanding alongside ours to be fruitful, as well as the dogs and the mostly steady pattern of Nicola returning to the house at the end of each day. Additionally, the back-and-forth between the present day and the past further developed our understanding of the ways in which Nicola and Vivian grew up to be the people they are today and the things they ultimately carried with them from childhood. It was an interesting portrait of how our experiences and circumstances as children shape the way we interact with the world as adults.Â
The only thing that fell somewhat short for me with the progression of the story was that because the story progressed so steadily, I almost felt that the ending came and resolved too quickly. However, I do think this could provide a juxtaposition to the pace of the rest of the story and be exemplary of the rapid way in which these kinds of situations can unfold.Â
I loved the unfiltered depictions of grief in this story, from the sadness and depression to the anger and lashing out at whatever is nearby. I also found the role of religion in this story to be interesting, even though it did not play as major a role as some other factors. Nicola’s relationship and struggle with religion compared to her sister’s and her best friend’s family’s felt very truthful.
All in all, She Taught Me Everything was an incredibly beautifully written piece of literary fiction with elements of mystery that made the story even more compelling. Trigger warnings for this novel include a car accident, death, grief, non-graphic animal death, hospital, mentions of child abuse, mentions of abortion and miscarriages, and a brief mention of an Indigenous stereotype. I would recommend this novel to anyone interested in steadily-paced stories about sisterhood and family secrets with elements of mystery and complex, fleshed-out characters.