The Sister by Lynne Alexander

The Sister

Lynne Alexander

RRP: £8.99

‘It is a warm and accomplished work of sympathetic imagination. I felt myself, as I read, wholly absorbed into Alice's painful but fascinating interior life.’ Hilary Mantel, author of Man Booker winning novel Wolf Hall

Description

William James, the psychologist…
Henry James, the writer…
Alice James, the sister?

Alice James spends most of her short life in bed. Henry calls it her solution to the ‘practical problem of life’, and William is too busy and too far away to pay much attention. Her lifelong companion, Katharine Loring, is a constant support, but in the midst of coping with Alice’s pain and frustration, the two women are faced with the shock of discovering Henry has made use of them in his fiction.

Alice’s witty voice rises vividly from the page as she casts an acerbic eye on the characters who populate her life and on the tensions between Katharine and Henry in this compelling fictional memoir.

CATEGORY: Contemporary fiction

Lynne Alexander was born in Brooklyn, New York and moved to Britain in 1970. She became a professional harpsichordist before turning to writing in l980. She has since published five novels including the widely praised and translated Safe Houses. Her work as writer-in-residence at three hospices is recounted in two volumes of poems. She also taught on the MA program in Creative Writing at Sheffield Hallam University. Now retired, she lives in an AONB in the northwest where she continues to write.