The Sirens, by Australian author Emilia Hart, is an intriguing story about two sets of sisters. Lucy is a university student in modern-day Australia, while her older sister Jessica is an artist living and working in Comber Bay in the south coast of New South Wales. Both have a rare skin condition that impacts negatively on their self-esteem.
After a violent incident on campus, Lucy travels to the seaside town to seek shelter at Jessica’s place, but finds her missing in suspicious circumstances. While staying in Comber Bay and searching for clues about her estranged sister’s life, Lucy unearths various secrets about their shared past – and the trauma that led their paths apart.
In particular, both Lucy and Jessica have increasingly vivid dreams about twin sisters Mary and Eliza, two women transported to Australia from Ireland on a convict ship two hundred years earlier. Both also find themselves drawn to the mysteries surrounding the disappearances of eight men in the seaside town.
The story is told alternatively from the perspectives of Lucy, Mary and Jessica’s diary, and later Jessica herself. The voices and tones, while exquisitely evocative and beautiful, remain relatively identical from one character to the next. The multiple and occasionally nonlinear storylines further slow the pacing, prompting readers to observe details and reflect on the characters’ experiences.
This deliberate approach certainly helps to immerse readers in each character’s feelings, emotions and memories, encouraging us to delve into those dramatic, meandering events that influence and even determine their decisions and actions. Doing so requires the author’s stringent control of the imaginable and plausible development of both characters and plots, as well as the ability to substantiate the process with sufficient and believable details.
In this regard, perhaps the story is let down by its attempt to connect female empowerment and self-determination with folklore, to use fantasy elements to provide a (false?) sense of security allowing the female characters to feel protected and their grievances avenged. In the words of Jessica’s neighbour Melody from Comber Bay: “There’s something about this place, something different. It keeps its women safe.”
Disconcertingly, although various crimes are committed against women throughout the book, none of the perpetrators is punished by law. Worse, instead of the promised magical protection, the story is bookended by Lucy and Jessica taking matters into their own hands, and one has to wonder whether or not their actions can be condoned. Either way, the fantastical transformation that the sisters undergo at the story’s end is a result, rather than the cause, of their discovery of their true selves.
Meanwhile, on top of her being callously dismissed by the system that is supposed to help her right the wrongs, Lucy’s injustice is practically forgotten as the story shifts its focus to slowly revealing the puzzling link between the two sets of sisters and especially between Lucy and Jessica. The ending does not help, as Lucy concedes “it doesn’t matter” that she will never get to be a journalist. “In a way, she’s glad that it happened. It led her here, to this moment. To this new understanding of who she is, her place in the story.”
With all that said, to this reviewer, the story shines in its empathetic depiction of the convict women and their plight. It is their resilience and courage, their mutual support and loyalty, that make them unforgettable characters. It is the bond they share in adversity – their sisterhood – that sustains them, which renders Mary and Eliza’s ensuing transformation rather irrelevant. It only proves that women do not need magic or fantasy to achieve agency, autonomy and self-reliance.
Note: This book review is originally titled “A story about sisterhood”. A shorter and modified version was published by Ranges Trader Star Mail on April 22, 2025, P.16. You can also view it on The Star Mail’s website.
Voices under the Sun 陽光下的聲音 