Sisters

Our unnamed narrator lives her days with the husband she adores, his two children, and the unbanishable image of the woman who married him first.

Referring to the first wife only as her, to whom her husband was still married when they met, she lives her married life with constant reminders of this woman, with whom she has a respectful but arms-length relationship. Free of the marriage, has she reclaimed her life as an artist? Will the narrator ever equal her intellectually, or ever forget the betrayal that lies between them? And what of the secrets between her and the husband, from which the narrator is excluded? The daring and precise build up to an unforeseen and eerily wonderful denouement is a triumph of subtlety and surprise. In Sisters, Lily Tuck delivers a hip update on Rebecca by way of Jenny Offill, reckoning with marriage, love, and female competition, charting with elegance and insight love in all its phases.