SISTERS by LINDA LAUREN

SISTERS

BY LINDA LAUREN

THE BLURB:-

Kate and Alice are sisters who are so different and yet so much the same.

Kate, the one who'd done something with the looks and sense of style they'd both shared. Her life: the world of fashion and fashionable places. Keeping in touch between trips abroad. A world of airports and exotic destinations, spring collections and sensuous fabric, of beautiful people and immaculately skin-deep emotions.

Alice, her twin and once inseparable companion. Living now in the suburbs with a nice, boyish husband and a house that's always a mess.

Alice pregnant, then Alice a mother: lovingly flustered and scatty, almost- but never quite- coping. Both women a warm, living reproach to the other as Kate, coolly organized, descends to help out her sister's crises.

Each woman with an ache of regret for what might have been. Neither foreseeing that her way of life was not as stable as she thought.

THE REALITY:-

I read Linda Lauren as a teenager, and her other two novels explored the journey of pubescent girls growing into women in a completely unique way. This book deals with twin sisters whose lives have taken very different paths.

At 128 pages long, this was probably the shortest book I've read since I was a kid. Also, having 20 pages missing in the centre of the novel was not a positive thing! On close inspection, looking carefully at the spine, it looks as if they were never there in the first place, as opposed to having fallen out, or having been cut out...most strange! But I found that this, thankfully, didn't mar the story too much.

Linda Lauren writes in a gritty and very real way, exploring many of the issues that affect working class young women. Although the book was written in 1983, everything inside here holds a strong relevance today.

Perfectly groomed Kate works in fashion and reconnects with the sister she's been out of touch with for a while. Alice lives in happy domestic chaos with an adoring husband, popping out children in quick succession. But neither of their lives are as happy as they appear on the surface- Kate is married to a harsh, self-centred, perfectionist of a man and Alice doesn't feel she can accommodate the third child that is already on its way.

I like the way women's problems are dealt with; the medical realities of difficult pregnancies and childbirth, the struggles trying to run a home and raise a young family and the question of abortion. I also like that the story is tinged with more radical ideas, such as Kate experiencing severe abdominal pain as Alice goes into labour. I love the way the relationship between these siblings is explored and explained.

But most of all I loved the ending, with its very, very, VERY unexpected twist. Certainly worth a read.