Sisters
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
‘Tuck’s prose is elegant.’ New York Times Book Review
Sometimes I wondered whether she had had boyfriends before they got married. Or was she still a virgin? I also wondered whether men find deflowering a woman for the first time thrilling and satisfying? Or do they think it an onerous task?
I should have asked him but didn’t.
An unnamed narrator lives with her new husband, his two teenagers and the unwelcome presence of his first wife―known only as she. Obsessed with her, our narrator, the second wife, moves through her days presided over by the all-too-real ghost of the first marriage, fantasising about how the first wife lives her life. Will the narrator ever equal the first wife intellectually and sexually, or ever forget the betrayal that lies between them? And what of the secrets between her husband and the first wife, from which the second wife is excluded? The daring and precise build-up to an eerily wonderful denouement is a triumph of subtlety and surprise.
With Sisters, Lily Tuck delivers a riveting psychological portrait of marriage, infidelity and obsession; charting with elegance and insight love in all its phases.
Lily Tuck is the author of six novels: The Double Life of Liliane; I Married You for Happiness; Interviewing Matisse or the Woman Who Died Standing Up; The Woman Who Walked on Water; Siam, or the Woman Who Shot a Man, nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award; The News From Paraguay, winner of the National Book Award; the short-story collections The House at Belle Fontaine and Limbo, and Other Places I Have Lived; and the biography Woman of Rome: A Life of Elsa Morante.
‘With her signature clipped and measured prose, National Book Award winner Tuck’s new novel is elegant, raw, and powerful.’ STARRED review, Kirkus reviews
‘A slow unravelling…Unsettling.’ Age
‘A short yet sharp book…As far as quick, nuanced reads go about marriage, jealousy and love, this seems unsurpassed and quite simply, lovely.’ AU Review
‘A spare and compelling novel in fragments…Its prose is clean and crisp, as tantalisingly minimalist as her apartment.’ Saturday Paper
‘Sisters slices straight to the heart of a marriage burdened by infidelity and obsession. It’s powerful and insightful, recounted in an elegantly wistful style that makes the sudden climax all the more impactful. Plenty of style, and despite its slimness, a lot of substance.’ Written by Sime
‘Weaving together a multitude of literary references, delicate symbolism and inner monologue, Sisters is a well-executed exploration into the complexities of relationships and of how to live with unbearable imperfection.’ Culture Trip
‘Tuck’s latest work is understated, seemingly simplistic, but full of innuendo, of the complexities of human relationships.’ Otago Daily Times
‘It took me a mere ninety minutes to read Lily Tuck’s Sisters which might lead you to think it’s a slight, inconsequential piece of fiction, but that’s far from the case. A sharp psychological study of obsession with a neat sting in its tail, it’s completely riveting.’ A Life in Books
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With her signature clipped and measured prose, National Book Award winner Tuck's new novel is elegant, raw, and powerful. As does I Married You for Happiness, this novel also largely takes place inside the mind and memory of a narrator. Fixated on her husband's first wife, referred to as "she" throughout, the narrator spends most of the book imagining what the first wife was like in her youth or what she's like now as a refined, middle-aged pianist. Though the two women have rarely met, the narrator focuses on the specific intimacy of their sharing, albeit in succession, the same man. Though at first she benignly estimates the number of times the husband and first wife would have made love, over time, her perseveration becomes more consuming, teetering on the verge of obsession. Both women live in upper Manhattan, and the narrator sometimes goes across town, to the large grocery store she imagines, correctly, to be where the ex-wife does her food shopping, and waits in the aisles. The husband himself is largely out of the picture, traveling for work, yet his absence grows more noticeable as this succinct book builds in emotional intensity to a shocking ending. Though compact enough to be read in one sitting, it's also magnificent enough to be reread and savored.
