Talking with Eleanor Brown

Readers are fond of asking author Eleanor Brown which of her fictional, Shakespeare-loving sisters she's most like: capable, responsible Rose (named for Rosalind in "As You Like It"); independent, prickly Bean (formally Bianca, named for Kate's sister in "The Taming of the Shrew"); or the baby of the family, wild child Cordy (short for Cordelia, King Lear's favorite daughter).

Brown says there's a bit of all three siblings in her . . . and in all of us.

"There's someone in everybody who wants adventure, someone who wants to be safe, someone who wants to be independent, someone who wants to be taken care of," says Brown. Of course, when she was a kid, the answer was different: "I was definitely Cordy," she confesses.

The former teacher is talking about her first novel, "The Weird Sisters" (Berkley, $15 paper), an irresistible examination of a family that "has always communicated its deepest feelings through the words of a man who has been dead for almost 400 years," thanks to its Shakespeare professor father. Their mother's illness and their own individual crises bring all three adult daughters home, where they spar, attempt to coexist and try to figure out what comes next.

"I come from a family of three sisters," says Brown, who has a master's degree in literature and lives in Colorado with her partner, writer J.C. Hutchins. "I wouldn't have been interested in writing this book if I hadn't."

Why do birth-order theories interest you?

When I was in college, I was a psychology major, and I did my Capstone Research Project on birth order. People think of it as astrology, something that's fun to read about, but honestly, I really feel like it affects us. You can really see it come out in interesting ways. When I was a teacher, it came out in kids all the time. A child comes to your desk and says "Is this right? Am I doing this right?" and you say, "Yes, only child, you're doing fine!"

When did you learn to love Shakespeare?

In ninth grade, my teacher handed me "Romeo and Juliet." I hated "Romeo and Juliet." It's still my least favorite play. Later, we read "Macbeth," and that was better, but I don't think I read any more Shakespeare till graduate school. I was studying at Oxford, and I saw "A Midsummer Night's Dream" done in an outdoor amphitheater, and Titania and Oberon arrived by boat. I had this revelation: "Oh! I get it! They're plays!" We give 14-year-olds plays with difficult language and say, "Read this like a book," and they're not books. They're not meant to be experienced that way.

Why did you decide to use the narrative "we" in writing the book?

When you listen to people tell stories about their families, there is a we. "When we were little, we went to Disney World." Marriages are the same way: "We like to go out to dinner on Friday nights." It allowed me to do some things for the sisters, to have them comment on each other's actions without being judgmental or cruel.

Why doesn't the mother in the book have a name?

The book is about the transition of this family from being parents and children to being adults together. If you're a parent, there's a period of your life where you lose your name. You're just Mom or Dad or Jaden's mom or Tony's dad. You exist because of your relationship to the child. So the sisters aren't recognizing their parents as people at the beginning of the book. The father gets a name because he has an identity outside the family. But the stay-at-home mom, that's all she is to her daughters.

The paperback edition of "The Weird Sisters" has a reading guide. How do you feel about guides in general?

I was actually involved in writing it. . . . It was a collaborative process. At the publishing house, it was interesting the questions others came up with. Like: "What's up with Bean? Why is she such a horrible person?" I objected to that. These are my babies; don't pick on my kids! She's the character who a lot of people find hard to love. People ask me if she's really remorseful, has she done her penance. One of the things I've realized seeing those questions is that when you write a book, once it's out there, it's not yours anymore. Everybody reads a different book. Everybody brings their own emotional baggage, their own history.