The True and Splendid History of the Harristown Sisters

(Paperback)

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Description

It is the age of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, when Europe burns with a passion for long, flowing locks. And when seven Irish sisters, penniless and fatherless, grow up with hair cascading down their backs, to their ankles, and beyond, men are not slow to recognise their potential. It begins with a singing and dancing septet, but this is not what fills the seats: it is the torrents of hair they let loose at the end of each show. Their hair is a rich offering and will take the sisters out of poverty, through the dance halls of Ireland, to the salons of Dublin and the palazzi of Venice. It will bring them suitors and obsessive admirers, it will bring some of them love, and each of them loss. For their past trails behind the sisters like the tresses on their heads and their fame and fortune will come at a terrible price...

Reviews

Michelle Lovric is devilishly clever, fiendishly comic and generally just an irresistible novelist. I delighted in every page * Elizabeth Gilbert *
This is a story to sweep you up and spin you about like a mad Irish jig. It swirls you away amid giddy torrents of language into a fantastical, sensual, yet villainously comic world As the compulsive power of her narrative increasingly overcomes her plangent mazes of her description, the reader finally realizes that they are in the irresistible hands of a storyteller who portrays not just her period but human nature too * Rachel Campbell-Johnston, The Times *
Just love her humour and magical flamboyance * Sainsburys Magazine *
Engaging and affecting in a way that will stay with you long after the final page is turned * Irish Examiner *

Author Bio

Michelle Lovric is the author of four novels - Carnevale, The Floating Book (winner of a London Arts Award and chosen as a WH Smith Read of the Week), The Remedy (longlisted for the 2005 Orange Prize for Fiction) and The Book of Human Skin (a TV Book Club pick in 2011) as well as four childrens books. Her book Love Letters: An Anthology of Passion was a New York Times bestseller. She divides her time between London and Venice. www.michellelovric.com