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Sister
Reviews (5)
Guardian Review
Nicci French via Ford Madox Ford, anyone? Lupton's debut is an exceptionally confident domestic gothic thriller with a mosaic-like, non-linear structure - "pointillist", its graphic designer narrator Beatrice calls it. Framed as a letter from Beatrice to her dead sister Tess, in which she lays out the facts of Tess's murder as she has discovered them, Sister works so well because of the natural, unforced way it withholds information from the reader. It also packs a devastating emotional punch. Tess and Beatrice got on pretty well, but theirs was still a complex, awkward relationship to which Lupton does full justice. Indeed, Sister is so ably done, so perceptive about grief and guilt and self-delusion, that when the cliches of the genre do obtrude in the form of overwrought prose - "Facts of exploding shrapnel were ripping our relationship apart" - it's a bit of a shock. - John O'Connell Nicci French via Ford Madox Ford, anyone? Lupton's debut is an exceptionally confident domestic gothic thriller with a mosaic-like, non-linear structure - "pointillist", its graphic designer narrator Beatrice calls it. - John O'Connell.
Kirkus Review
Hitchcockian spookiness in this tale of two sistersone living, one deadin London.Beatrice Hemming hurries back to London from her home in New York when she hears her younger sister Tess is missing. Tess is an artist and a bit unpredictable, so it's not clear when (or whether) she'll turn up, but after a few days the police find her body in a public bathroom in Hyde Park. Not only that, but she had been pregnant and had just a few days before her death given birth to a stillborn child. Because Tess is found to have cuts on her arms and because her behavior had been erratic, her death is officially ruled a suicide arising from postpartum depression. But Bea is convinced Tess had been murdered. The prime suspect is Emilio Codi, Tess' art professor, a married man who got her pregnant and who made it clear he wants nothing to do with the child. Beatrice (or Bee, as her sister called her) decides to turn detective, and she does this in part by inhabiting Tess' former life. Bee lives in Tess' apartment, takes over Tess' waitressing job and even befriends someone who'd been involved with Tess in an experimental medical program during her pregnancy. Other suspects include a prominent doctor involved in this experiment to "cure" Tess' unborn child of cystic fibrosis, and the head of a biomedical company about to make a killing in the stock market for a cure for CF. But Bee finds deeper mysteriesfor example, that Emilio is not a carrier of the CF gene and hence could not be the father of her child. Lupton's decision to make Bee the narratorand to have her write to her dead sisterenhance the book's eeriness.A skillfully wrought psychological thriller.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Murder mystery? Psychological thriller? Medical-ethical treatise? Yes to all, but so much more, too. Finally, the category doesn't matter nearly as much as the fact that Lupton's remarkable debut novel is a masterful, superlative-inspiring success that will hook readers (and keep them guessing) from page one. Beatrice Hemmings has moved to the U.S. and made a shiny, successful life for herself. But when her younger sister, Tess, is found dead apparently having killed herself Beatrice is shocked, bewildered, and grief-stricken. How could her full-of-life sister commit suicide? When Beatrice arrives back in London, she learns that Tess had a reason to commit suicide her longed-for baby had just been stillborn. Beatrice is stunned, but the more she considers what happened, the more she is sure Tess was murdered. Vowing to investigate, Beatrice writes a letter to Tess (it is this technique that shapes the book) to describe her efforts to find the truth. But as the letter goes on, it is clear that Beatrice is on what could be a fruitless quest, and readers will begin to wonder whether the things that don't add up are real, or whether it's Beatrice who's losing her sanity? The powerful, heart-stopping ending lays bare the truth, and even readers who thought they'd guessed the outcome will be shocked. A chilling, gripping, tragic, heartwarming, life-affirming enigma of a story. . HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The buzz is growing to Stieg Larsson volume for this accomplished literary thriller (one of the many rave reviews from the UK described the book a. Nicci French via Ford Madox Ford ). Lupton's publisher is gearing up for a once-in-a-season campaign.--Melton, Emil. Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
TWO years ago, a British study suggested that men and women who grew up with sisters had happier lives and rosier outlooks than men and women who didn't. The presence of even one sister in a household was enough to foster an atmosphere of emotional openness that helped family members communicate and tackle problems. No such benefit accrued to people who had only brothers. The study was small - only 571 subjects took part - but it was heartening to think that sisters, so often portrayed as fractious rivals, envious of one another's attractions and covetous of one another's friends and clothes, might actually serve as mortar binding the bricks of a family's psyche. For the British writer Rosamund Lupton, the power of the sisterly bond must not have come as news. In her first novel, a taut, hold-your-breath-and-your-hand-kerchief thriller that was a huge critical and popular success in England last year, she makes a point of crediting her own younger sister as "the inspiration for the book and a continued blessing." In "Sister," Lupton puts the bonds connecting two distant and seemingly dissimilar siblings under the microscope. The elder, Beatrice, 26, bossy and cautious, has left her mother and sister behind in England to live in New York, where she has acquired a sensible, dull corporate job and a sensible, dull fiancé. Her free-spirited younger sister, Tess, 21, lives in London, where she floats around painting abstract canvases, befriending stray cats and cashchallenged foreigners, and having love affairs with unsuitable people. Though an ocean divides them, the power of sisterhood unites them. This is not to say that they don't have their differences. While Beatrice admires the exuberance of Tess's artwork - "Joyous. Beautiful. Explosions on canvas of life and light and color" - she doesn't tell her so, not wanting to encourage her in such a chancy career. Tess, angelically, doesn't take offense. Though she knows that Bee, as she calls her, would "rather be safe than happy" and is "afraid of life," she would never hurt her feelings by saying so. As Tess writes in an e-mail, she has Bee's "best interests at heart." "You are my sister in every fiber of my being," Bee thinks to herself. "And that fiber is visible - two strands of DNA twisted in a double helix in every cell of my body - proving, visibly, that we are sisters." This reflection leaves out two other strands that bind them. Both women mourn the loss of their brother, Leo, who died of cystic fibrosis when they were children. And during the excruciating time of Leo's last illness and death, their father left the family, decamping for France. When Bee was packed off to boarding school, Tess comforted her by sending her letters written in lemon juice, invisibie until Bee shined a flashlight onto the paper. "Ever since," Bee reflects, "kindness has smelled of lemons." Before anyone grows too misty-eyed at this idyll of sisterly counterpoint, it should be noted that Lupton's readers learn of it only gradually, in retrospect and from hearsay. As the novel begins, Tess is dead - found, soon after going missing, in a disused public bathroom in Hyde Park, her wrists deeply slashed, just days after giving birth to a stillborn baby that had tested positive for cystic fibrosis early in her pregnancy. The authorities call the death a suicide, but Bee, who flies home to London as soon as she hears of Tess's disappearance, insists that the little sister she knew so well would never have ended her own life. Nonetheless, she worries: Did she really know Tess that well? If they were so close, why hadn't Tess told her she was in trouble? Had Tess called, and had Bee possibly missed the message, too wrapped up in her New York life to notice? "If I had taken more time to be with you," the stricken Bee agonizes, "if I had been less preoccupied with myself and listened harder, I might have realized something was very wrong months earlier." Had Tess, not Bee, been the more caring, responsible sister all along, despite her youth and "scattiness"? "I ran away, didn't I?" Bee frets. "I pursued an uncluttered life on another continent. No different from Dad." These self-recriminations come in a long, soul-searching letter Bee writes to her dead sister, in which she retraces the chronology of her struggle to learn how and why Tess died. That searing confession forms Lupton's novel. "Why am I writing this to you?" Bee asks the sister who's no longer there. "I need to talk to you," she says. "It's a one-way conversation, but one that I could have only with you. . . . I'll tell you one step at a time, as I found out myself, with no reflecting hindsight." Will she find a murderer in the rearview mirror, or was Tess stalked only by her own bad luck? Either way, as Bee's investigation widens, the reader begins to wonder if her increasingly reckless confrontations with the people she labels as suspects are altogether safe. If someone did murder Tess, should Bee make her sleuthing quite so obvious? And if someone didn't, could Bee be losing her mind? WITH "Sister," Lupton, who has a long history as a scriptwriter, enters the highly charged ring where the best psychological detective writers spar, her hands raised in a victory clench. She encircles her story with electrified ropes: new developments continually jolt her readers, which doesn't stop them from eagerly - and a little sadistically - awaiting the impact of the next blow. Like Kate Atkinson, Patricia Highsmith and Ruth Rendell, Lupton builds suspense not only around the causes and details of her story's brutal denouement, but also around the personalities and motivations of those who lunge and those who duck. Of course, the mystery Bee attempts to solve doesn't involve only how and why Tess died, but who Tess really was and who Bee is - and will be without her. And Lupton adds yet another source of tension into this tingling welter of unknowns: she uses technology not as a deus ex machina but as a kind of diabolus in machina. Early on, Bee reveals that Tess took part in an experimental medical trial to cure her baby in utero of the cystic fibrosis that killed their brother. The unsettling science behind this procedure accompanies the narrative like an unsmiling doctor in a white lab coat, injecting a mood of anxious uncertainty. Initially Bee, "wearing my full older-sister uniform," had counseled Tess against the treatment; but it had worked. Hearing that news from Tess, months earlier, Bee had wept with relief, "big-wet-tears crying. I had been so worried, not about your baby, but about what it would be like for you looking after and loving a child with C.F.," she had explained. "A small risk," Tess had told her, "is something I have to take." Both tear-jerking and spine-tingling, "Sister" provides an adrenaline rush that could cause a chill on the sunniest afternoon - which, perhaps, the friendly company of a sister or two (or, in a pinch, a brother) might help to dispel. The narrators sister is found dead in a park, her wrists slashed, days after giving birth to a stillborn baby. Liesl Schillinger is a regular contributor to the Book Review.
Library Journal Review
Written in the form of a letter from Beatrice, the older, more substantial sister, to her younger, bohemian sibling, Tess, the narrative reveals within the first few pages that Tess has gone missing and is found dead. Bea and Tess, even with a big age difference and an ocean between them, were incredibly close, so when Bea receives the "phone call," she drops everything and races from New York City to London. Although Tess's death is ruled a suicide, Bea knows her sister would never kill herself. As Bea frantically tries to find the murderer, in the process losing pieces of herself, the reader is catapulted into the search. VERDICT Beautifully written with an unexpected twist at the end, this debut literary thriller was a best seller in Britain and a Richard and Judy Book Club Pick. Thriller fans will eagerly await Lupton's next book. [See Prepub Alert, 12/6/10.]-Marianne Fitzgerald, Annapolis, MD (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
