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Sisterland

The striking Sunday Times bestseller

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Sisterland

By: Curtis Sittenfeld
Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
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Summary

Brought to you by Penguin

For identical twins, Kate and Violet are about as unlike as two peas from the same pod can be. Except in one respect – they share a hidden gift they call ‘the Senses’, a special kind of intuition that can allow them to see things that are yet to come. After Kate inadvertently reveals their secret when they are thirteen years old, they are set on diverging paths into their adult lives.

Twenty years later Kate is a suburban housewife who suppresses her premonitions in the hope of leading a normal family life, while Violet lives alone and works as a psychic medium. Then one day Violet ignites a media storm by predicting a major earthquake in the St Louis area where they live.

As the day Violet has announced for the earthquake draws nearer, the sisters must grapple with the legacy of the past, the confusion of the present, and the unsettling glimpses they both have of the future.

© Curtis Sittenfeld 2013 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

 Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Women's Fiction Natural Disaster

Critic Reviews

A work of psychological genius and has a wonderful twist at the end...a literary pageturner...There's a fizzing, daring originality to Sisterland that draws you in and takes your breath away.
Engagingly messy mixture of the comic and the sombre...a beautifully delicate way of describing both familial and conjugal love.
Curtis Sittenfeld has a knack for capturing characters so vividly it's uncanny...brilliantly evokes small-town Eighties adolescence...the gripping denouement is expertly carried out.
Wise and empathetic, this is a book with a great sense of humour and an even bigger heart.
Sittenfeld's debut Prep was one of the best novels about adolescence written this century, and it is here, when dealing with the competitve world of teenage girls, that Sittenfeld is at her best in Sisterland...Like Kate Akinson with her recent Life After Life, Sittenfeld is a reliably realistic (if slightly dreamy) novelist who has here tackled a somewhat far-fetched concept outside her normal range and displayed impressive comfort in doing so.
Most people I know who have read anything by Curtis sittenfeld would read anything else the woman wrote, me included...Suddenly, trivial details become exquisite insights into class, entitlement, love and your place in the world...Fans will instantly be swept along by Sittenfeld's confident, page-turning writing and sharp eye.
A joy to read...[for] Sittenfeld's ability to get under the skin of complicated, contradictory characters, capturing the anxieties, challenges and compromises of everyday life, love and parenthood so that ... you will find yourself nodding at the day-to-day dynamics and thinking, "Yes, that's exactly how it is."
Dazzlingly original, this absorbing book, which is at heart about family ties, fizzes with energy and will grip you to the last page.
Will this be a novel turning on supernatural powers and a natural disaster or something else altogether? Without giving the end away one can say that it is more than anything a wonderful anatomy of family life.
Engrossing.
All stars
Most relevant
Wow - loved this so much. Have always been a fan of Sittenfeld’s short stories but somehow I couldn’t get into her novels. All of that has changed with audio! This novel
Is so absorbing and addictive and moving and I’m so Sad it’s over! Even my husband -
Who overhears snatches as I listened -
phoned me from work yesterday to ask me what was happening. And the writing is deceptively simple and plain. Sittenfeld is such a lyrical and beautiful writer. I feel I know all the characters. Anyway I could go on for hours but I need to listen to her next novel. Bingeing now! The audio performance is first class. If you haven’t listened to this novel or Rodham - which is also fantastic - you’re in for a treat. I’ll Suspect be re listening before too long.

Fantastic novel

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