“Sisters” by Daisy Johnson (ending): Revealing the novel’s twist at the end is okay with the sisters

Most reviewers feel it is their duty not to reveal the twist at the end. But I feel free to do so, because the sisters themselves “liked reading the twist in books first” (1, p. 198).

My interpretation in the previous post, that this novel has a multiple personality scenario, proved correct. At the end, it is revealed that the older sister, September, has actually been dead since before the novel begins, but has seemed alive to July (the narrator), because July has a September-like alternate personality, whom July frequently sees, hears, and becomes.

However, July’s alternate personality is not labelled “alternate personality,” and July is not labelled as having “multiple personality.” Instead, July’s problem is referred to as severe “grief” (1, p. 197). So I don’t know whether the author knew she was describing multiple personality, per se.

If the author had researched multiple personality, she would have learned that it does not originate due to trauma in a person’s late teens, but rather trauma in childhood. After being symptomatically subtle and subclinical for many years (since the abuse has stopped), it may become obviously symptomatic and be first diagnosed after a death, usually the death of the parent who had abused them in childhood (2, p. 101). It is not clear how far back into childhood the abuse of July by September might have gone.

But it may be significant that the sisters, besides liking to read the twist in books first, “liked not having a dad” (1, p. 199). Their father, who had died many years ago, and whom September resembled, had probably been abusive.

At the end of the novel, although functioning well enough to be accepted to college, and having finally realized that September is dead, July, who has not been diagnosed and treated for multiple personality, still feels “There is someone else inside me, using my mouth to speak, holding me still” (1, p. 204).

1. Daisy Johnson. Sisters. New York, Riverhead Books, 2020.

2. Frank W. Putnam, MD. Diagnosis & Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder. New York, The Guilford Press, 1989.