Musings of a Bibliomaniac

Here's the book in a nutshell:-

The author had one brilliant idea in her mind. She wanted to write on a very taboo subject, a theme causing scandalized eyebrows to raise ever since the dawn of civilization perhaps, but still being generously explored in Greek, Norse folklore, literature and the liberal arts all the time.
So she had her handy taboo subject which would do enough to attract readers like ants to honey(I'm one of the ants yes) by itself. But what does she do about the plot? Yunno that slight inconvenience of fleshing out an actual story with characters and descriptions and imagery and emotions. That is a hell lot of work.
So here's what she does to make things easier-She writes about 2-3 pages of actual material where this unfortunate brother-sister duo fall victim to the famous Disappearing Parent Syndrome(a regular plot device in YA novels now) and go through a set of fixed daily actions. Cooking, cleaning, feeding their younger siblings, doing their homework, doing their own homework, having problems with the budding trouble-maker of a brother, going to school and then doing the same things on an endless loop. And these 2-3 very boring pages are repeated numerous times within the length of this excruciatingly monotonous novel at least taking up about 50% of its volume. Another part is devoted to following the male protagonist, the closeted-pervert of a brother, who of course likes making out with his sister but flinches at her touch or when she takes the lead and does something unexpected calling it 'sick' and 'disgusting'.
Hypocrite much? Dude, just accept it that you're messed up in the head a bit and a pervert and move on with life already.
The brother is an outstanding student (*snark reflex kicking in*) at school but he has to overcome a crucial handicap of getting all tongue-tied when made to speak in public or erm...private even.
The author blames this on, of course, the fact that he has to play a dad to siblings barely a few years younger than himself while their mom keeps playing truant from domestic life and this has retarded him socially somehow.
The screw-up chews and chews on his lip and turns it into a bloody sore every time he gets into a fix and there are at least a 100 references to this wound on his lip and we're supposed to feel sympathy for him. But all I felt was a further intensification of my already there revulsion.

Then there's last remaining part or the sister, who like a ray of sunshine in this literal hellhole of a background, makes some sense. She is the voice of reason and the initiator of conversations the brother-cum-lover refuses to have. She breaks up fights, declares her intentions at the outset, knows what she wants, speaks her mind and helps every one around her. In short she makes things a 1000 times easier while the brother just keeps on complicating things. And it is frankly because of her and the lovable siblings, that I lasted till about 70% of the length of this book.

But I can't take this anymore. The writing is repetitive, the narrative highly dull and the logic behind the plotting, flimsy. A sad misuse of an incestuous relationship that could've been handled better and more realistically.