Shred Sisters

(Paperback)

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Description

No one will love you more or hurt you more than a sister. It is said that when one person in a family is unstable, the whole family is destabilized. Meet the Shreds. Ollie is the sister in the spotlight until her stunning confidence becomes erratic and unpredictable, a hurricane leaving people wrecked in her wake. Younger sister Amy, cautious and studious to the core, believes in facts, proof and the empirical world. None of that explains what's happening to Ollie, whose physical beauty and charisma mask the mental illness that will shatter Amy's carefully constructed life. As Amy comes of age and seeks to find her place - first in academia, then New York publishing, and through a series of troubled relationships - every step brings collisions with Ollie, who slips in and out of the Shred family without warning. Yet for all that threatens their sibling bond, Amy and Ollie cannot escape or deny the inextricable sister knot that binds them. Spanning two decades, Shred Sisters is an intimate and bittersweet story exploring the fierce complexities of sisterhood, mental health, loss and love.

Reviews

I love this book. It moves like a souped-up pickup truck -- Patti Smith, author of Just Kids
Lerner has created a richly layered family novel that manages to be raucously funny, insightful, and tender... I will be thinking about the Shred Sisters for a long time -- Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, author of Good Company
A brilliantly written, emotionally gripping saga that delves into the complexity of sisterhood, mental health, and resilience... One of the best books I've read in years -- Chlo Cooper Jones, two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist
A bildungsroman overcast with the thick and inconstant cloud of mental illness... Lots of ambitious books announce themselves; this one doesn't need to... The prose is controlled, but neither virtuosic nor spare; the plot, enticing but neither Dickensian nor minimalist. Decidedly un-trendy, crescendo-less and restrained, this tragicomic family saga is a Bach prelude to the Rachmaninoff of a writer like Jonathan Franzen * New York Times *
Shred Sisters is the kind of novel readers won't want to end... Its bright, clean, gallivanting story rewards an open mind and heart with crisp prose, fresh plot turns and dimensional, dishy portraits we can instantly recognize * Washington Post *

Author Bio

Betsy Lerner is the author of the popular advice book to writers,The Forest for the Trees, and the memoirsFood and LoathingandThe Bridge Ladies. She received an MFA from Columbia University in Poetry. A publishing professional for over thirty years, Lerner is a literary agent in New York.Shred Sistersis her first novel.