Jacob Have I Loved

You know how sometimes there's a book that seems to haunt you-- it pops up on every reading list, you always see it in the library, hear stuff about it everywhere, but you never really want to read it? Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson haunted me, I regret to say. But there is a cure for book haunting: you have to read it.
And I did read it. And it was pretty good. There is no other way to describe it than as a coming of age story. Sarah Louise is growing up on the little and VERY religious island of Rass and is always being eclipsed by her twin sister Caroline. Caroline has had attention from birth, because she was the fragile one, the delicate beauty, where, as their mother put it,
"Sarah Louise never gave them a bit of worry." Caroline grows up calling Sarah Louise "Wheeze," so that Sarah Louise doesn't even have a name anymore, she is just called Wheeze all the time. (And who would like that?) And what's more, Caroline can sing. She gets to go to the mainland every week and take music lessons and become a star while Sarah Louise stays home earning money with her father crabbing on the island to pay for Caroline's lessons. Sarah Louise takes secret satisfaction in this, because even though Caroline gets tons of attention, she knows she is paying for part of it.
So this explains the title. It's after a line in the Bible, "Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated." (Which is fitting because of the whole super-religious island thing.) Sarah Louise knows the minute she reads this line that she was never meant to be loved by God, if that's how God treated the unwanted twin in the Bible.
I think everyone feels overshadowed by their sibling at some point in their life; I know I do. This book really shows how one girl grows up with so much change in the world and on the island and how she discovers she can get away and be herself after all, twin or no twin. I'm glad I read this, and now I'm not being haunted.
Now if I can just get rid of Bud, Not Buddy...