The Dark Sister - Rebecca Goldstein

Hedda, a writer of angry feminist novels, has fled New York City to write in solitude in an old house on the coast of Maine. Her only interruptions come in unwelcome phone calls from her self-absorbed and many-times divorced sister Stella, describing the sessions with her psychoanalyst. Between the sisters there is anger and disdain, but there are also childhood traumas and secrets that inexorably link them. And within the sisters' story is Hedda's own novel in progress: a tale of two Victorian sisters, both spinsters, and both verging on madness. With the themes of passion and intellect, overlapping stories and unsettling dualities, The Dark Sister is a compelling blend of philosophy and dark humor, from one of today's most provocative novelists.

"Clever, observant and nimble. . . . One has the sense of reading a writer who has just discovered the full possibilities of her talent."-The New York Times

"A successful blend of metaphysical suspense and satirical comment."-Chicago Tribune

"The Dark Sister is brilliantly ingenious, beautifully written, and thoroughly alarming."-Iris Murdoch