Two Sisters
by Blake Morrison
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Pub Date 16 Feb 2023 | Archive Date 9 Mar 2023
HarperCollins UK, HarperFiction | The Borough Press
Description
‘A book at once bold, magnanimous, heart-breaking and riveting’ HOWARD JACOBSON
‘Beautiful. Affecting. Erudite.’ SUSIE ORBACH
TWO SISTERS publishes on the 30th anniversary of Blake Morrison’s ground-breaking book And When Did You Last See Your Father? which forged the way for a new genre of confessional memoir.
‘She’s gone, that’s all, and though there’s no retrieving her I’d like to make sense of who she was and what she became. It wasn’t just that she changed over time. She could change from day to day. Drink made it worse but the origins went deeper. You never knew which you’d get, the kind and loving Gill or her doppelgänger. Two sisters.’
Blake Morrison has lost a sister and a half-sister in recent years. Both are the subjects of this remarkable and heart-breaking memoir, along with a forensic examination of sibling relationships in history and literature.
Blake’s sister Gill struggled with alcoholism for a large part of her life, and her shocking death is the starting point for Two Sisters. Blake returns to their childhood to search for the origins of her later difficulties, and in doing so unearths the story behind his half-sister, Josie.
As he unravels these narratives, Blake deals movingly in the guilt and shame that will be familiar to every person who has struggled with addiction in their family. He is unflinching in doing so, and the result is a book which provides testament to that common struggle, as well as acknowledging the complex, hidden forces on which all our lives are based.
Two Sisters is the extraordinary new memoir from the chronicler of human frailty, Blake Morrison.
Available Editions
| EDITION | Ebook |
| ISBN | 9780008510541 |
| PRICE | £3.99 (GBP) |
| PAGES | 400 |
Featured Reviews
Sophia B, Media/Journalist
'If you're reading this, my sister is dead,' one of the early chapters begins. As well as exploring the worlds of real-life siblings such as Charles and Mary Lamb (another challenging woman)! William and Dorothy Wordsworth and Felix and Fanny Mendelson, the story also expands from the original territory of Morrison and sister Gill to take in another sister - Blake's half-sister Josie, the second of the two sisters.
In the first memoir, And When Did You Last See Your Father? - Blake establishes his father's status as a charismatic local GP who made his own peace (and whose wife seems to have done, too) with his infidelity. This book deals with the aftermath, and the effect it had (or didn't have - Blake is never sure) on Gill and Josie.
SPOILERS: I originally assumed that the title refers to the two sides of Gill, the sober and the drunk sides (practical, devoted, a loving mother/chaotic, self-pitying, deceptive), but while less is known about Josie, she seems to have been a woman of two sides too, whose death was less expected - she wasn't an addict - and who was apparently undisturbed by the revelation of her paternity, having known since childhood, but nonetheless the revelation does come awfully close to her sudden death).
Morrison jokes about his compulsion for self-revelation, and there are some very excoriating moments here as well as some terrible puns - do we really need to know about his undescended testicle and 'poor bowel control' in his early teens? But generally, this is an important book and beautifully written - I just hope for everyone involved that it's the last one.
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