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    The Sister: A Novel
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    The Sister: A Novel
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    The Sister: A Novel
    Audiobook10 hours

    The Sister: A Novel

    Written by Poppy Adams

    Narrated by Juliet Mills

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    From her lookout in the crumbling mansion that was her childhood home, Ginny watches and waits for her younger sister to arrive. Vivien has not set foot in the house since she left nearly fifty years ago; the reclusive Ginny has rarely ventured out, retreating into the precise routines that define her days, carrying on her father's solitary work studying moths.

    As the sisters revisit their shared past, they realize that their recollections differ in essential and unsettling ways. Before long, the deeply buried resentments that have shaped both their lives rise to the surface, and Vivien's presence threatens to disrupt Ginny's carefully ordered world.

    Told in Ginny's unforgettable voice, this subtle and chilling debut novel tells an extraordinary story of how families are capable of undoing themselves—especially in the name of love.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJun 17, 2008
    ISBN9780739366745
    Unavailable
    The Sister: A Novel

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    Reviews for The Sister

    3.5/5

    341 ratings61 reviews

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    • 2/5
      Luckily I purchased this Audio book for a 1.00. It was a strange book that left a lot of loose ends. There are to many unanswered questions about Ginny that would have made this book so much better.I understand the suspense is needed but Ginny's sister kept referring to how everyone protected her. Ginny does have some strange things happen to her but the story lines never play out so I still wonder what was up with their childhood. I was patient to listen to ALL the moth details thinking there were clues there but if there were I am to dense to see them. I enjoy learning about new things but If I had been reading I would have skipped much of this part of the book. Can't say I can recommend this one.
    • 4/5
      When I began reading this book it immediately reminded me of We Have Always Lived in The Castle which I read earlier this year. The odd foreboding that something more was happening or had happened in the past to these sisters, but the author was just building the reader up for the conclusion with very little clues here and there. I originally rated this book 4 stars immediately after reading it but believe it to be closer to 3 or maybe 3.5 stars. This is because many things were left open ended at the end. This usually doesn't bother me but it was a lot of build up for a not as satisfying ending.I was unsure if some parts of the plot were necessary while I was reading but everything builds to one conclusion and all events were needed in order to get to the ending. Impressive, yet the actual conclusion was abrupt and vague. Instead of leaving the reader to fill in the blanks, the conclusion kind of felt a bit insulting. Like we, the readers, couldn't handle the truth. Which, in fact sitting here typing this, I can actually say (if that was the intention) is quite clever... considering that is how Virginia was treated and protected her entire life... Maybe I should keep my rating at 4 stars haha.I really enjoyed the connections the author allowed for the reader to make between the main character/narrator and her life's work with moths. The beauty of how she understood her own world and her place in that world through a subject that was often ignored by everyone else. The constant reference to cannibalism ("They just have a look about them.") and parasitism of other organisms living in nature and carrying about their natural urges/instincts in order to survive for even their short lives was a great way for the author to show insight into the main character, Virginia, as well as some of the minor characters actions, such as her parents. I personally enjoyed this book and the voice of Virginia throughout the novel. I would definitely recommend it.
    • 5/5
      Virginia "Ginny" Stone has lived her whole long life in the now-crumbling ancestral mansion in Dorset, about which her mother used to say "Either Victorians were vulgar, or we were very vulgar Victorians." Her only sibling, vivacious Vivian, comes home for the first time in almost 50 years and all the family skeletons fall out of the closet. The sisters were raised by the scientist father who dedicated his life to the study of moths, and the glamorous--then--alcoholic mother, Maud. It doesn't take long to figure out that something is off with the narrator, Ginny.Every review of this book includes the words and phrases: secrets, moth science, Gothic, unreliable narrator, dysfunctional family.I enjoyed this book very much and was always happy to pick it up, although, strangely, it took me three weeks to read a book just under 300 pages. But I blame that on my life and not the book.The Behaviour of Moths was published by Virago Press and nominated for he Costa first book award. The author, Poppy Adams, hasn't published anything since, which is a shame, because I thought she showed great promise here.My North American copy from another publisher is titled The Sister, which I thought was a terrible choice, but after reading it think it's fitting. But "The Sister" didn't intrigue me at all, so I think the original title was better. YMMV.Recommended for: Based on reader reviews on LT and GR, most people were "disappointed" with this, or they found there were too many loose ends "not tied up," and finally "too much moth science." I disagree with all of this, but it does appear to be the prevailing opinion, and I did go into this with low expectations, so . . . I feel I'm the only person who thinks this was really good.
    • 4/5
      This novel is a fascinating exploration of the ways in which the mind can work, distort, and deteriorate. At the outset, this seems to be a fairly simple story of estranged sisters reuniting in their old age. While I was aware from the beginning that the real story would probably come in the possible scandal or heartbreak of their estrangement, I wasn't expecting the instability of the narrator.It's the little things that tip you off gradually to what is happening here. Once you realize that Adams is using the classic technique of the unreliable narrator, it's impossible not to look beneath the surface of everything that she sees and remembers for the truth. It's also amazing how easily you can understand Ginny's logic, as twisted as it is - almost frightening once you realize how easily a mind can warp to truth.The novel is a little slow to start out, but the story really picks up fairly soon. The descriptions of the moths and the processes that come with studying them may seem a little tedious, but I think they are necessary to completely immerse the reader in Ginny's mind - especially at the end of the novel.This is definitely a novel worth reading. Adams does a fantastic job of mapping the way Ginny's mind works, and also of manipulating the story. It's fascinating to see things from Ginny's point of view, all the while trying to figure out what's truly happening outside of her comfort zone and under the surface. *Review of ARC
    • 4/5
      Thanks to whoever reviewed this favorably earlier in the year. I really enjoyed it. It's the story of two sisters told from one sister's point of view. This sister, Ginny, is revealed to have something of a personality disorder. She is obsessed with time, has trouble expressing and reading others' emotions, and adheres to a strict routine. She tells the story of her life with her sister Vivian, mother Maud, and father Clive. She lives an insular life in their crumbling Victorian mansion - rarely if ever leaving it. Her family is a long life of lepidopterists, scientists who study moths, and Ginny joins the family trade. In a series of flashbacks, she tells her family's story, always told through her somewhat unique point of view. I found the ending a little unsatisfying, but otherwise I really liked this - satisfying story telling and interesting characters.
    • 4/5
      Two sisters reunited after a mysterious grudge kept them apart for decades, an aristocratic manor house fallen into disrepair, family secrets galore. Sounds like the formula for a great read! But The Sister also takes a few unexpected left turns with the story. The narrator, Ginny, is an unreliable narrator, but not because she's duplicitous or manipulative; instead, she just doesn't understand people. She can talk endlessly about her scientific observations of moths, and she can accurately observe the actions of the people around her, but when it comes to understanding their feelings and motives, she simply cannot see what is right in front of her. Ginny is a fascinating character. It's hard to make someone so oblivious both believable and sympathetic, but author Poppy Adams does a great job. The spookiness of the setting also provides a ton of atmosphere -- the isolated house, the scientific specimens strewn throughout the rooms, the brief interventions by others whose motives are completely unfathomable to Ginny and thus to us. As a result, though, the other sister, Vivian, suffers as a character because we never quite know what her role in the story is. Vivian has problems of her own, clearly, but were her feelings about the family any more accurate than Ginny's?Altogether, this was an interesting puzzle of a story with fascinatingly ambiguous characters, but a little too ambiguous to be entirely satisfying.
    • 5/5
      Really excellent for anyone who likes psychology or interesting characters
    • 3/5
      Lethal lepidopterists, a dysfunctional family, the scent of sherry, and a bit of the gothic. I think one of the former reviews I've read on this book said it best; a lot of readers have complained that they got a lot more moths than answers and, as such, the book was very dissatifying. However, the reviewer went on to say that there are so few answers because our protagonist isn't aware that there needs to be or that there are even questions lurking about in her own familial and personal history. In that way I think the gothic theme of the story is wrapped up very nicely, especially for a debut novel, from the symbolism of the decrepit/vacant in the house and the relationships/secrets held within it.

      I found the story to be engrossing and interesting. Definitely worth the read.
    • 5/5
      Loved this book. Quietly and slowly dark.
    • 4/5
      I'm not quite sure why so many people seem to dislike this book, going by the reviews I've seen here. Perhaps it was mis-marketed as some people seem to have expected it to be a gothic horror story. Perhaps people have very short attention spans or expected something with a little more action in it.

      I picked it up second hand with no preconceptions and enjoyed it for the most part. There are moments where I feel the decrepitude of the surroundings might be laid on a little thick. And I'm not sure I liked the ending - although it's correct for the story and it made me think back and reconsider my interpretation of earlier scenes, it was a little bit quick. It made me think a little of Julian Barnes' Sense Of An Ending actually.
    • 1/5
      I read this as a library book. I'm so glad I didn't purchase it. The only reason I finished it is becuase I was hoping it would get better - it never did.
    • 4/5
      This was the May read for my book group and I opened the pages quite keen to get started. From the beginning I felt a sense of familiarity with A Place of Secrets by Rachel Hore, although the storyline did not share any similarities beyond the depth of research done by the authors, so just why I felt this familiarity I am not sure.The storyline is complex and the author weaves a series of threads and genres within the pages. The book contains four central characters, all members of one family who live in a rather large house in a large estate in Dorset. The house description was atmospheric, and built in the mid Victorian period and I could visualise a gothic looking house with a foreboding mist surrounding the building, which almost felt sinister.The family are dysfunctional - father Clive is a self absorbed individual, a naturist and has quite a collection of moths. The research on the moths was astounding and very interesting. Mother, Maud is a troubled woman who tries to keep the family grounded and has a secret or two. The daughters, Ginny and Vivien are close as children, but as time passes by they are like strangers, which is not helped by the fact that Vivian has not been home to the family estate for around 50 years.Each individual has their secrets and there is almost too many. There are several medical themes through the book; of mental instability, Aspergers or Autism, Alcoholism, Aging and decay, and different levels of abuse.This is a busy novel, with lots going on and yet nothing is explained fully, which means that the reader can form an opinion about the characters and their actions.Did I enjoy it? Actually yes, I found the detail of the moths fascinating, but wonder if there was too much detail about this. I would have liked more details of the house and perhaps definitive answers to some of the questions that the book produced. Overall, a good read and it is hard to believe that this is a first novel for the author, who researched the various details very well. The book is cleverly written, with the decay of the house is almost reflective of the family.Published as The Sister in the US and as The Behaviour of Moths in the UK.
    • 3/5
      Spoilers in 2nd paragraph.As much as I like unreliable narrators and swirling mysteries that aren’t 100% resolved at the book’s end, I think this particular story was a bit too vague and unresolved to be satisfying. From the outset it’s clear that Ginny is a bit off. From her obsession with time and her inability to relate to people, she’s a backward person and totally self-absorbed. As a narrator she’s excellent though and the style is very personal and conversational since she addresses her audience directly as ‘you’. And it was fun trying to see through her delusions and lies to some kind of truth. The setting was also really palpable and the parallels between Ginny’s crumbling life/psyche and the deterioration of her house were well done. At first, both are sheltering and offer protection, but over time and with neglect, they become prisons, burdening their occupant with decay.In the end though, there are still only ideas and suspicions, no real information. I wish we’d heard from Vivi more or even directly. In the end, Ginny still wonders why Vivi came home after all those years and I’m somewhat mystified as well. And that’s not the only frustration, pretty much all the individual clashes of the past are unresolved. Why did Maud become an alcoholic? Did she fall or was she pushed? Did Clive push her? Did Ginny? Why did he fly the house and go into a nursing home so fast after Maud’s death? What happened to Arthur? Why did Vivi reject all association with her dead child? Why did Vivi leave so totally even if she had Ginny’s welfare in mind? Did Ginny push Vivi off the bell tower or did she fall? What did Maud mean by wishing they could have a normal family? Virtually none of these things are explained fully, and while I don’t mind drawing my own conclusions about some aspects of a mysterious story, I don’t like having to tell myself all of it. It makes me wonder if the author knew any of it herself.A bit less of the processes and procedures associated with lepidoptery would have been a good idea. Yes, I think Adams needed to include a lot of it, but I found those sections to run a bit too long. Shortening them could have reinforced tension and focus on the story, yet still provide characterization for Ginny and her life. Maybe those sections, particularly about killing, preserving, dissecting and some of the grosser moth behavior was supposed to disgust us, thus adding to the emotional recoil of the story, but it didn’t work on me, I just found them tedious.
    • 4/5
      This is a horror story in the same way that Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? is a horror story - that is to say, slow-building and incredibly psychological. Ginny is a wonderfully ambiguous narrator, leaving you with just enough details to piece together *most* of the story on your own. I enjoyed this much more than I expected to.
    • 4/5
      this was one of my charity shop buys and i knew nothing about it. i have to say im really pleased i bought it as it turned out to be a fascintating and gripping book.the story pans out really nicely with no moments of dullness, even with all the technical information about lepidoptary. if you like a bit of a thriller with a twist i can really recommend this.
    • 4/5
      There isn’t much that excites me in literature like a mystery that exudes gothic atmospheric, with family secrets being imparted via an unreliable narrator in a crumbling mansion, but I had never heard of this particular author or book until a friend sent it to me. She knew I couldn’t resist the genre, and as a nature lover I was fascinated by the study of moths to which the narrator and her father dedicated themselves, and, moreover, the copy is one of the Harper Perennial gloriously soft paperbacks. By page two, if you had tried to pry this book out of my hands, I would have savaged you with my teeth.Ginny, the last sentinel remaining in her family home to watch for the return of her younger sister – both women now in their seventies – is beset by memories of her childhood and early adulthood which are, in places, missing key connections... Ginny is not the classic neglectful or maliciously unrealiable narrator; she has Aspergers’ syndrome or is on the autistic spectrum; and because such diagnoses were rare when she was a girl, and her parents shielded her from the extent of her ‘difference’, she has a blinkered idea of the home she grew up in, lacking much of the emotional nuance needed to decipher it. Adams cleverly avoids demonising these differences, yet still provokes an atmosphere of uncertainty as to Ginny’s role in pivotal family moments; Ginny can be frustrating to read, but Adams also makes her accessible and relatable and, best of all, maintains the teasing drip of reader-understanding at the perfect level. There is a heady degree of irony to the ending, and a compelling sadness to Ginny’s stunted but perceptible emotional evolution. I’ve read more chilling tales in the gothic convention, but I loved this for its depth of character and consistent tension.
    • 4/5
      Very chilling but absorbing book about a pair of sisters, reunited after forty years. Their family history turns out to be quite tangled, and the narrator's reliability is questionable. The desire to know what really happened, and who is telling the truth, will keep you turning pages.
    • 3/5
      This sounded promising, in a Shirley Jackson kind of way, but fell short of expectations. It’s the story of two late middle-aged sisters, estranged for over forty years, their childhood and the big, rambling house they grew up in, and the skeletons in their family closets. Unfortunately, it suffers from an unreliable narrator, so we never figure out what these secrets actually are. That may be intended as atmospheric, but what it actually is is irritating. It’s evident that the narrator has some, for want of a better word, problem, possibly a degree of autism, but, again, this is never explained. It’s strongly implied, if not actually said out loud, that everything the narrator believes about her own life, including her high-flying career as a lepidopterist, is an elaborate fantasy – but, again, there’s no real explanation, and no hint of what the truth might be. Anyway, it all ends badly, and I was glad to see the last of it.
    • 3/5
      Summary: Ginny Stone awaits the return of her sister Vivien to their family home, four decades after she left it. Ginny has long been the sole inhabitant of the crumbling mansion and sole keeper of the family's moth collection. We revisit the past through Ginny's eyes: her emotionally absent lepidopterist father, from whom she inherits a profession; her emotionally abusive mother's last days; a childhood accident and a young marriage. Vivien's return will turn Ginny's world, so carefully maintained for decades, upside-down.Firstly, this provides a brief but efficient lay person's introduction to lepidoptery (which is an excellent word).Characters are thoughtfully examined - all have very different personalities and are well-represented. Clive is absent, confused, once brilliant but degrades to stumbling through middle-aged mediocrity. Maud was also once brilliant and beautiful, but she descends to drunken abuse. Ginny is calculated and calm, but not unfeeling. Her future was determined by her mother, unlike Vivien, who is as delicate and flighty as the moths of the title - gregarious, impulsive, fragile and yet terribly demanding. No one in the family recovers from Vivi's demand that Ginny act as a surrogate mother for her.The flashback structure works - it is linear and insertions are made at appropriate intervals. I did find the twist at the end rather strange - there appeared to be no reason for it beyond revenge for disturbed memories.Certainly an engrossing read.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this page turning read which didn't outstay its welcome, but it perhaps left a few too many loose ends at the conclusion. The restricted view of the first person narrator kept the atmosphere strange and confused - ultimately a bit too confused for me, to be honest. Due to the mysteries surrounding Virginia and her suspect storytelling I was expecting a big twist at the end - She's a ghost! She's been programmed to kill the President of the Royal Entomological Society! She's really a giant moth! Which, granted, would all have been awful ways to end the book but nevertheless it left me feeling a bit nonplussed and wanting a few more answers. But then again this did make me want to go back and try to fill in the gaps, which is the sign of a good story.Also, being somewhat scientifically illiterate I like a bit of science in fiction to make the hard stuff palatable and so appreciated the bits about lepidoptery. Although the three plot points concerning the moths did seem to fizzle out with no resolution. But maybe the moth equivalent of Moby Dick was not what Poppy Adams was aiming for.
    • 4/5
      Really enjoyed this book..it tells of family secrets and two sisters different point of view on their childhood a great debut by this author.
    • 4/5
      Ginny is 70 and lives in the ancestral family home (castle?), mostly empty because Ginny has sold the furniture for grocery money. Her younger sister Vivi is returning home after being away for 47 years. Ginny is the narrarator, but can she be trusted? The book goes back and forth between the present and the years when Ginny and Vivi were growing up. This is a slow-moving book; yet, there is a sense of dread that permeates the storyline and kept me reading. I also thought it was an interesting study of a family deeply affected by addiction and mental illness long before those things became acceptable topics of conversation in society. Well-written, enjoyable book.
    • 4/5
      I agreed with the comments on the cover of this book that compared it with Hitchcock and Du Maurier. There is an admirable sense of menace running through it, and a feeling that maybe the narrator cannot be trusted. On the other hand it was described as humorous, which I disagreed with – dark, definitely. Funny, no. Unless you count the hand on bum incident about a quarter of the way in, one of the book’s lighter moments. It was milked for all it was worth –wrung out like a dishcloth in the hands of a mother-in-law until not a drop remained.The reader is likely to emerge from this book a great deal better informed about moths, their habits, likes and dislikes, and what happens if you squeeze their bums. The fact that they can survive if you chop their heads off came as a surprise. I like a book that teaches me something. There was a lot of destruction, though, the annihilation of wildlife on a scale not seen since Jeremy Clarkson wandered into a shed full of rodents. As thenarrator makes clear, naturalists are interested in the survival of the species rather than the survival of individuals.All in all an atmospheric, exceptionally well written book that will appeal to readers who like to have their heads messed with, and for those who like to re-read to spot the subtleties they may have missed first time round.
    • 4/5
      Narrated by the eccentric scientist, this book is slow-moving at first. However, the momentum builds and it becomes quite gripping. I enjoyed it.
    • 5/5
      Any book set in England, immediately draws a strong connection to my heart. This is especially true of “The Behaviour of Moths”, as the story opens with Ginny standing at a window, waiting for her sister Viv, to return to their family home, after an almost 40 year absence. The cold, deteriorating stone estate was the perfect setting for this wonderfully evolving story. The house seemed to mirror Maud’s deteriorating physical and mental state due to alcoholism, Clive’s deepening withdrawal from the harsh reality occurring around him, and Ginny’s mental decline and subsequent reclusive behaviours.Almost immediately, I began to sense that Ginny didn’t have all her wits about her. I felt the novel unfolded events in the proper time, allowing this reader to develop her own predictions and theories about what would occur next. Ginny’s flashbacks of her parents allowed me to quickly understand how Ginny and Viv had grown into the adults they had become, and being happy that Viv had escaped the insanity which bound the remaining three family members together. The following statement may be seen as harsh, as I’ve never had such a strong desire for children, but I felt Viv didn’t really escape the insanity, as she asked Ginny to have a child for her. I felt Viv acted irrationally by asking Ginny to take on such a complicated task, given her mental state.It was disturbing how selfish Clive and Maud were; each given to their own interests and ignoring the glaring issues between them (alcoholism, physical and mental abuse, and Ginny’s mental illness).
    • 4/5
      The Behaviour of Moths By Poppy Adams Sally ApollonOverall Score: 6.5 out of 10Literary StyleI found this to be very readable, conversational style, funnily enough, the second book I’ve read in a row where the author directly addresses the reader. This is a device that I think this author used more effectively, as the style was more conversational, more intimate, for example she would start a train of thought with: “Did I tell you…”Themes CHANGE-METAMORPHOSIS: I had to bring this up, because at the outset, I thought that Vivi was going to be Ginny’s salvation, to rescue her from herself, from her own self-imposed isolation. But it became more & more obvious as time wore on that Ginny’s “cocoon” was impenetrable; that she had no desire for any kind of change, that it was not going to take place. It seemed like an obvious theme in the context, but it really didn’t figure. TRUTH-SANITY: Intriguing because it seemed that the inherent truth of the central character, our narrator—was indeed insanity—although that was not obvious from the outset, indeed, all throughout the book I had this sustained belief that Ginny was odd, certainly, mentally ill, maybe a little, but it wasn’t really until the end of the tale that as her world came crashing down you realized that you had been a part of her madness, her delusional unreality. This was difficult to perceive because her family DID keep her in a cocoon & did not appear to try & break her out of it. Was Vivi’s life so mysterious to her because she took no interest, or did her family keep it from her to try & preserve her stability? It was impossible to say, but the result was that we, like Ginny actually knew very little about Vivi—which was frustrating; probably intentionally so, on the part of the author. Ginny was kept in the dark—like the moths. INTELLECTUAL STUDY VS PRACTICAL ABILITY: There was this small window on the world of intellectual fanatics, such as Clive and his cohorts, who were indeed misfits and not capable members of society. Sometimes I think people like this find careers in which they can obsess—and it has a useful outcome, even when the remains of their life & relationships are in tatters. Clive’s colleague—who made offensive overtures to Ginny was a classic example of this.LOVE: Dysfunctional all of them: husband-wife, mother-daughter, father-daughter, sister-sister. It was disturbing to see how Ginny’s relationship with her mother deteriorated as Maud declined into alcoholism, but more disturbing was the blind eye that Ginny’s father and sister turned to it. Tragic that this was the only intimacy Ginny had, when she was colluding with her mother. And how odd was the surrogacy episode? Arthur was evidently a nice bloke who was in WAAY over his head with this family. From this point on, I was trying to diagnose Ginny. FREE WILL VS INEVITABLE (CHEMICALLY DRIVEN) BEHAVIOUR: I did find all the biological lepidopterist details completely absorbing and could quite follow Clive’s train of logic about there being no free will—I have thought the same myself at various times in my life. I do find it compelling that Moths will always do the same behaviour in response to the specific chemical-mediators. With the exception of the cannibalistic Moths…I thought that episode was very funny: Arthur to Vivi: “How do you know it’s a cannibal” “You just know”. That was the singular unifying moment for this family; it had a parallel to their treatment & acceptance of Ginny, in the same way they just knew & accepted that she was different & isolated her. GOD VS NO-GOD: This follows on from the above—the most interesting and poignant part was when Ginny was listening to the church service & simultaneously watching the invaded ants nest. She curiously heard herself being prayed for, which I thought would become an insightful moment for her, but while Ginny rejected God wholesale, I felt that her need for him was exposed when she saw her sister ignore her baby’s grave and was so emotionally wounded by it. That, to me, demonstrates emotions locked deep away (not absent altogether)—which is why she became so angry, enough to kill her. NOT that she genuinely had no need for or regard for God, but that her life had been a steadily built up defense from him and others.SECRETS: How secrets can turn on you & destroy lives. The baby-secret. The alcoholism-supposed secret. The mental illness secret. The physical abuse secret.CharacterizationGINNY: Very well drawn. I was very sympathetic toward her, until she put the arsenic in the milk. I think I decided in the end that she was probably paranoid-schizophrenic, but I’d have to check my facts on that one.VIVI: I guess she was like many adults who have literally run away from dysfunctional-toxic families. Truth was we learned very little about her—especially how she felt about the baby & how her marriage fell apart—another story, I suppose.MAUD: I don’t know too much about alcoholism from the inside, but I’m guessing the author does, as this feels all too true.CLIVE: What a cowardly man! How he ran away from everything to hide in his work—and he was supposed to be the academic one. I thought Ginny was the alcoholic co-dependent; but it was really him who enabled it—Ginny didn’t stand a chance.Overall, I really liked the book, I found the comments on aging & decay interesting too. It was not just the characters getting old physically, but the house was falling apart, as was their moral sense. Finally, I have to say that the first thing I thought about Moths was that their being drawn to the light was suicidal—it could kill them and it seemed that these characters spiraled closer & closer to the sun until they got burned.Afterword: I realized later that I had reviewed this book without making any comment about the fact that Vivi believed her father to have murdered their mother. When it came out it was almost secondary to Ginny’s own issues, but it did go some way to explain Vivi’s behaviour. It didn’t seem true to me, the story was almost enough without this, it seemed superfluous.
    • 3/5
      The storyline of this novel was less than enthralling for me, despite the plot description on the back cover. I enjoyed the writing style, and it seemed to be an insightful character study, albeit skewed from the main character's point of view. The plotline was intriguing, but ultimately disappointing in that it just couldn't keep my interest, and the excessive details about moths was a bit much. The climax was reached about 3/4 of the way through, and then it just kind of fizzled from there. I thought this story had lots of potential & it could lead to good discussion, as much of the story could be left to various interpretations. But it was missing something...and in the end, I really just didn't care about either sister.
    • 4/5
      Only gradually does it become apparent that the protahonist is Aspergic in this dark tale of sibling rivalry and obsession. A tremendous debut intrigues but it does not demand rereading.
    • 4/5
      Two sisters who haven't seen each other in 50 years reunite at their original home, which was a very stately manor in its day, where the older sister has lived as a recluse for much of her life. The story unfolds over a weekend and goes back and forth from the past to the present. The protagonist is the older sister who seems to have some eccentric if not "special" ways about her and sees the past very clearly and assumes her sister has no idea what really happened in the home or to her parents after she left the home at 17. Interesting handling of the subjects but too much technical information about moths for my taste. However, it doesn't diminish the book more than one star.
    • 4/5
      Two sisters reunite in their crumbling mansion after a 50-year estrangement. Their strange story of dysfunction, secrets, trauma and mental illness is fascinating and completely gripping. I loved it!