She ends up concentrating her attention on what usually matters most in life -- why people are like they are, what frustrated needs and false perceptions of themselves make them do what they do, and what actions on the part of others can, with luck, go some way toward remedying the situation.
This is the route humane literature almost always takes. It was the route that classic giants of the novel like George Eliot or D.H. Lawrence instinctively took, and it will continue to be the way in which the best novels are made.
That said, this is no Mill on the Floss or The Plumed Serpent, though the topics of sibling rivalry and the healing effects of great empty spaces give it a slight relation to both classic forebears.
The author of When My Sister was Cleopatra Moon would, I'm sure, be the last person to claim any exalted status for this modest tale. Even so, her great predecessors would undoubtedly recognize the moral goodness and sanity of what she is trying to say and, though they would be surprised at the short, snappy paragraphs and the lack of any very challenging vocabulary, would probably read the book through to the end.
So, although this novel is in many ways unpretentious and certainly not especially complicated, its author looks at her fellow human beings in ways that makes readers ineluctably feel for them.
It isn't only immigrants who suffer from not having a role, from being unable to adapt, and from wanting not so much to be loved in melodramatic style as simply to be listened to and cared for on a day-to-day basis.
Frances Park has constructed a pleasant and at times charming tale that stands within the best tradition of imaginative writing. Her central character, almost certainly some version of the author herself, refuses to be led astray by fashion or money or a career, and instead looks at what the poet Wordsworth called "the human heart by which we live". As such, the book's influence is certain to be a good one, and we must hope that it succeeds.
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