To what extent have Noelle’s decisions been shaped by being Clarissa and Lily’s sister? Why has she always had so much difficulty getting along with her sisters?

Clarissa was a cello prodigy while Lily became a lawyer. Therefore, both sisters must have been quite disciplined even when they were young. Noelle however was pretty wild. Perhaps she never felt she could be as good as them.

It's hard to be the "black sheep" sibling of more accomplished siblings. Noelle was a "wild child" who needed something to make her special. the bad decisions of her youth, the promiscuity, the school expulsions, left her rather lost as an adult until she embraced orthodox Judaism. Even then, she engaged in this new passion to excess. It was something she could do to distinguish herself (and distance herself) from her sisters.

I think being the sister who was not accomplished and the black sheep made a big impact on Noelle's decisions in her life. She became the wild child to get attention from her parents -- even bad attention is better than no attention. Her decision to become very orthodox was one of the first times that she had shown any discipline in her life but I think she took it to the extreme to show that she was more disciplined than her sisters.

I am not sure I think we can know the answer to that. Family position has long been blamed for a lot of things but I personally think it is over rated as a cause for a childs problems. As ever, the kid who develops issues will frequently be excused and explained by that but I think that if we studied a large number a families we would find that birth order is not a very good perdictor of either sucess or failure in a child. All of us have different personalities and tend to develop accordingly.

SusanR - do you think Noelle really wanted to prove that she was more disciplined than her sisters or just that she was "better" than them, using religion as a moral point.

Unfortunately Noelle was so defined by her family, and especially Clarissa and Lily, that she had difficulty being "normal." She takes life to extremes and that becomes her identity. The family seems to function better without her. Perhaps that is why she left and decided to live in Israel.

I agree that family position does seem to be blamed for many things, but from the story, it sounded like Noelle had problems from the get go. How these problems came about weren't discussed much. She seem to have been having problems and acting out from a young age. Was this because of her sisters or in spite of, who knows.

Mary annb- I agree; it's hard to know what motivates people. Could be she felt she didn't have her own identity and wanted to stand out somehow, even negatively. Could be anything. I have three kids and, in some ways, they're very different though they were raised in the same environment.