Curtis Sittenfeld is the author of the bestselling novels American Wife, Prep, and The Man of My Dreams, which have been translated into twenty-five languages. Prep was chosen as one of the Ten Best Books of 2005 by The New York Times and optioned by Paramount Pictures, and American Wife was chosen as one of the Ten Best Books of 2008 by Time, People, and Entertainment Weekly; both were nominated for the UK’s Orange Prize.
Her latest novel Sisterland tells the story of twin sisters:
From an early age, Kate and her identical twin sister, Violet, knew that they were unlike everyone else. Kate and Vi were born with peculiar “senses” – innate psychic abilities concerning future events and other people’s secrets. Though Vi embraced her visions, Kate did her best to hide them.
Now, years later, their different paths have led them both back to their hometown of St. Louis. Vi has pursued an eccentric career as a psychic medium, while Kate, a devoted wife and mother, has settled down in the suburbs to raise her two young children. But when a minor earthquake hits in the middle of the night, the normal life Kate has always wished for begins to shift. After Vi goes on television to share a premonition that another, more devastating earthquake will soon hit the St. Louis area, Kate is mortified. Equally troubling, however, is her fear that Vi may be right. As the date of the predicted earthquake quickly approaches, Kate is forced to reconcile her fraught relationship with her sister and to face truths about herself she’s long tried to deny.
Sisterland is a beautifully written novel of the obligation we have toward others, and the responsibility we take for ourselves. With her deep empathy, keen wisdom, and unerring talent for finding the extraordinary moments in our everyday lives, Curtis Sittenfeld has written a funny, haunting, and thought-provoking book.
The Guardian
“Although this isn’t a thriller, it is a work of psychological genius and has a wonderful twist at the end. Sittenfeld has crafted a literary page-turner masquerading as a feud between two sisters. In reality it’s about the politics of marital life and the difficulty of out-running your own childhood. It has all the best qualities of Tom Perrotta’s Little Children and all the fine, up-close detail of Ann Patchett’s work. There’s a fizzing, daring originality to Sisterland that draws you in and takes your breath away. When it comes to tearing apart contemporary American family life one microscopic fibre at a time, Sittenfeld is up there in a class of her own.”
Publishers Weekly
“Delicious insights into sisterhood and motherhood are peppered throughout Sittenfeld’s novel about identical twins with ESP… The twins… are rendered so vividly that readers would be able to pick them out of a crowd… A rich and intimate tale of imperfect, well-meaning, ordinary people struggling to define themselves and protect the people they love.”
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