Avery Blue Character Analysis in Blue Sisters

Overview

Avery Blue is the eldest of the four Blue sisters, introduced in the prologue as the family’s “leader” – born wise and world-weary, she is a thirty-three-year-old corporate lawyer living in London with her wife, Chiti. A recovering heroin addict, Avery has been clean for a decade but secretly relapsed into smoking and compulsive stealing. The novel tracks her slow-motion implosion: a hidden affair, mounting lies about wanting a child, and a fraught return to her family’s orbit after the death of her sister Nicky. Across the story, Avery wrestles with being “all backbone” yet also “tender flesh” – a woman who craves control but is repeatedly undone by her own intensity.

Plot Role

Avery’s actions drive major conflicts in the narrative. She is the sister who financially held the family together after Nicky’s death (paying the mortgage on the New York apartment for a year) and the one whose self-destruction threatens the fragile stability she has built.

The hidden affair: In Chapter Six, Avery reconnects with a younger man named Charlie at an AA meeting. Their kiss quickly escalates into a full sexual relationship, which she keeps from Chiti. Charlie’s philosophy of “total moral independence” appeals to Avery’s rebellious side, but the affair is also a symptom of her grief and unprocessed guilt over Nicky.
The relapse into theft: Avery begins stealing small items from shops – a habit that escalates even as she tries to justify it. The thefts mirror her earlier drug use: a secret, compulsive act that provides a fleeting thrill and a return to her hidden self.
Confronting her family: In Chapter Nine, Avery lashes out at both Lucky and Bonnie during an argument about Nicky’s belongings, saying the cruelest things she can think of (“You want to throw that away to help Lucky? … don’t be surprised if all you end up with is another dead body”). This outburst reveals her exhaustion from carrying the family’s emotional weight for years.
The turning point: In Chapter Twelve, after her fight with her sisters, Avery impulsively visits her mother upstate. There she steals from a newsstand, then returns the items, and finally admits to Chiti over the phone that she cannot have a baby – the first honest step toward rebuilding her life.
The epilogue: Ten years later, Avery is a law professor and has left Chiti for a woman named Fatima. She arrives at the hospital with Lucky for Bonnie’s labor, showing she remains anchored to her sisters despite the upheavals.

Motivations and Traits Shown Through Actions

Avery’s defining trait is a fierce, often punishing sense of responsibility. She taught her sisters to swim, she “covered for” her mother’s absence, and she made sure the family never lost their home. Yet this caretaker role comes at a cost: she suppresses her own needs until they burst out destructively.

Control and its opposite: Avery schedules her cigarette breaks with precision – the Barbour jacket, the gloves, the mouthwash – treating the act of rebellion as a ritual. She hates “being told what to do by anyone” (in the scene with her mother, she lies about working because the suggestion to look at the river feels like an order). This need for autonomy clashes with her addiction: she knows she cannot control her impulses, only hide them.
Intelligence as armor: Her photographic memory and legal career are sources of pride, yet she admits she “might have liked to be a poet or a documentary filmmaker.” Her brilliance is partly a shield: she uses intellectual superiority to distance herself from vulnerability, as when she dismisses Lucky’s modeling career or condescends to Bonnie.
Self-destructive drive: The novel repeatedly uses water imagery to illustrate her internal battle – the river swim at the end of Chapter Twelve, where she nearly stays under but surfaces. Her affair with Charlie is described as “inevitable” almost before it begins, suggesting a fatalism that runs beneath her disciplined surface.
Moral complexity: Avery is deeply principled but often acts against her own principles. She steals yet returns the items; she cheats yet values fidelity; she lies about wanting children yet eventually finds the courage to tell the truth. The text presents her not as hypocritical but as a woman in the throes of grief, where her usual ethical scaffolding has come unmoored.

Chronological Arc

Prologue: We learn Avery “does not know it yet, but in a few weeks, she will implode her life and marriage in ways she didn’t think possible.” The seeds are already planted – her smoking, her hidden tensions.
Chapter Three (one year after Nicky’s death): Avery smokes alone in her garden while Chiti brings up pregnancy. Avery agrees to try but lies awake feeling guilt – over missing Nicky’s struggles, over her own relapse. She describes having “returned to the hidden self, the Avery only she knew.”
Chapter Six: Avery goes to an unfamiliar AA meeting and meets Charlie. They kiss; she later goes to his house and begins a full affair. The chapter also reveals her traumatic past with ex-girlfriend Freja and her first experiences with heroin.
Chapter Nine: In New York, Avery fights with Lucky and Bonnie over how to handle Nicky’s belongings. She lashes out, revealing long-buried resentments about being the family caretaker.
Chapter Twelve (the climax): After the argument, Avery flees to her mother’s cabin upstate. She steals from a newsstand, then returns the items. She has a painful conversation with her mother, who admits she was never cut out for motherhood. Avery finally calls Chiti and tells her she cannot have a baby. The chapter ends with Avery swimming in a river, struggling between the desire to sink and the will to live. She surfaces, choosing life.
Epilogue (ten years later): Avery is now a law professor, separated from Chiti and married to Fatima. She rushes to the hospital with Lucky when Bonnie goes into labor. The sisters gather around the newborn Nicole, and Avery is among those holding her, her growth shown in her steadiness and presence.

Relationships

With Chiti: Their marriage is the bedrock Avery destroys. Chiti, a therapist, sees through many of Avery’s defenses – she knows about the smoking even before Avery confesses. The central conflict revolves around having a child: Chiti wants one, Avery agrees but then secretly sabotages the effort (through the affair, through lies). The phone call in Chapter Twelve marks a turning point: Avery finally admits “she cannot have a baby,” a truth that may end the marriage but also lets her begin healing.
With Lucky and Bonnie: Avery is simultaneously the overprotective big sister and the one who can be unbearably cruel. She teaches them to swim; she also tells Bonnie she might “end up with another dead body” if she helps Lucky. The bond is complicated by competition and grief, but the novel affirms its indissolubility: at the end, the sisters hold one another in the bathtub, and Avery recognizes that “this, too, was deserving of rapture, of song.”
With Nicky: Nicky’s death is the event that breaks open Avery’s carefully constructed life. She feels guilty for not seeing Nicky’s pain, and her grief manifests as anger (“Avery’s anger at Nicky” from the outline). In a flashback, Avery recalls teaching Nicky to swim – an act of care that later becomes a metaphor for wanting to save her but failing.
With Charlie: The affair is partly a reaction to grief and partly a return to a younger, more reckless self. Charlie is a mirror: his amoral egoism reminds Avery of her own past (and of Freja). She knows the affair is destructive but pursues it anyway. It ends implicitly when Avery returns to London to face Chiti.
With her parents: Her mother is emotionally absent, her father an alcoholic. In the upstate cabin scene, her mother admits she “was never cut out for motherhood,” confirming the lack that drove Avery to become a surrogate caretaker for her sisters.

Key Decisions and Consequences

Decision to hide her relapse (smoking, theft): This isolates her further from Chiti and deepens her shame. The thefts escalate, ending with the newsstand incident where she steals then returns items – a microcosm of her pattern of transgression followed by guilt.
Decision to start the affair with Charlie: The direct cause of her marriage’s collapse. Avery knows it is wrong but justifies it as “feeling alive” – a word that echoes her addiction vocabulary. The consequence is a shattered home and estrangement from Chiti.
Decision to stop helping her sisters: In her fight with Lucky and Bonnie, Avery declares she has “carried this family on my back for too many years.” This outburst hurts them but also liberates Avery – she is no longer playing the martyr. It forces her sisters to see her as a flawed human, not just the responsible one.
Decision to confess the truth to Chiti: After visiting her mother, Avery calls Chiti and finally says she cannot have a baby. This is the first step toward honesty and recovery. It may end the marriage, but it is a necessary break from the cycle of lying.
Decision to surface during the swim: The symbolic climax. The water represents death (Nicky’s eventual fate, Avery’s own downward pull). By choosing to swim up, Avery chooses life, sisterhood, and the difficult work of remaining.

Theme and Symbol Connections

Addiction and Recovery: Avery’s story is a portrait of ongoing recovery – not a straight line but a series of slips and returns. She is “living in all her defects: stealing, lying, judging, fearing, and resenting everything.” Her relapse into smoking and theft shows that addiction is never fully conquered; it can hide and resurface under stress. The AA meeting culture (the speaker who abstains from sex, the concept of a Higher Power) frames her choices. She rejects the easy consolation of religion but finds a kind of “higher power” in her responsibility to her sisters.
Sisterhood and Family Bonds: The novel argues that sisterhood is not the same as friendship – it is “tough, sinuous, unlovely, yet essential.” Avery embodies this: she resents her role but cannot abandon it. The final bathtub scene where the three sisters crowd together shows the physicality of their love. The epilogue cements this: Avery leaves her own wife to be with her sisters at a life-changing moment.
Identity and Reinvention: Avery has reinvented herself multiple times – from commune dropout to corporate lawyer, from addict to professional. Yet each reinvention carries the shadow of the old self. The hidden cigarette, the stolen goods, the affair – all are ways of “returning to the hidden self.” The question is whether she can integrate these parts without destroying her life.
Moral Egoism vs. Duty: Through Charlie’s philosophy and Avery’s internal conflict, the novel examines the tension between following one’s own desires (the “wildfire” love, the pleasure of the affair) and fulfilling obligations to others. Avery acknowledges that she “finds what gives me pleasure and I do it until it gives me pain.” The arc argues that duty to sisters – and to the self who wants to survive – must ultimately outweigh momentary gratification.
Symbol: Water and Swimming: Avery’s identity as the sister who taught everyone to swim contrasts with her own near-drowning. The final swim in the river pulls together the motif: she surfaces, gasping, choosing life. Water also connects to Nicky, the sister who “could hold her breath longer than any of them” – a memory that haunts Avery and drives her upward.

Five Book-Specific Questions and Answers

Why does Avery start stealing again, and is it connected to her earlier heroin addiction?
The text shows Avery stealing small items from shops in a pattern that mirrors her compulsion with cigarettes and her past drug use. She describes the feeling as “returning to the hidden self, the Avery only she knew.” It is clearly a symptom of her unresolved grief and her inability to confront her feelings about Nicky’s death. While the novel does not explicitly label it an addiction, it can be interpreted as a relapse into a less physically destructive but still dangerous behavior – a way of exerting control in a life that feels out of control.
Does Avery ever truly love Charlie, or is he just a tool for self-destruction?
The novel leaves this ambiguous. Avery is drawn to Charlie’s freedom and his philosophy of moral egoism – a sharp contrast to her own heavily principled life. Their affair begins with a kiss that “blew her mind,” but she also says she knows it will “dash her marriage and life.” Her past relationship with Freja, which was intense and destructive, suggests a pattern of loving “wildfires.” The evidence points toward Avery using Charlie to escape the pain of grief, rather than to build a real partnership. However, the text never dismisses her emotions as merely instrumental; she feels alive with him, and that matters.
Why does Avery tell Lucky “This is why you have no friends!” before storming out?
The line occurs during a heated argument in Chapter Six where Lucky has called Avery a “corporate cyborg.” Avery is hurt and defensive, and she retaliates with a personal insult. The deeper motivation is her exhaustion: she feels unappreciated for her success and burdened by always being the responsible one. The outburst reveals that Avery’s anger is not really about Lucky’s friends but about her own loneliness – she has built a life that looks perfect from the outside but leaves her isolated.
How does Avery’s relationship with her mother affect her decisions in the final chapters?
Avery’s visit to her mother upstate is a turning point. Her mother is eccentric and emotionally absent; she admits she was never cut out for motherhood. This conversation forces Avery to acknowledge that she cannot expect her parents to change. It also releases her from trying to be the perfect daughter. Shortly after, she calls Chiti to confess that she cannot have a baby – a truth she had been hiding because it might upset the maternal role she plays for her family. The visit, therefore, helps her stop pretending.
Does the epilogue suggest that Avery is finally happy?
The epilogue shows Avery ten years later as a law professor, separated from Chiti and married to Fatima. She is at Bonnie’s labor, steady and present. The prose emphasizes her growth: she has left a destructive marriage and found a new one, and she remains bonded to her sisters. Happiness is not explicitly declared – the focus is on “warmth and love” and the naming of the baby Nicole. However, the fact that she leaves her own wife to rush to the hospital suggests she has learned to prioritize what she truly values. It is a hopeful ending, not a perfectly happy one.