The Sister

July 28, 2008
This debut novel from Adams, a former documentary filmmaker, is an interesting and chilling account of two estranged sisters who recount, with varying detail, the memories of their past. Juliet Mills seems the perfect casting choice for narrator, as her rich English accent seems to saturate the words, making every one as important as the last. Mills's characters are honest and resentful, and listeners will be hard pressed not to see them as sisters in the real world. With an air for the theatrical, Mills is simply too strong a performer to ever let her audience sit back and take a break. A Knopf hardcover (Reviews, Mar. 17).

March 17, 2008
Estranged sisters Ginny and Vivien Stone reunite after 50 years, releasing a flood of painful memories in Stone’s eerie, accomplished debut. Ginny and her younger sister Vivien lead an idyllic childhood in West Dorset, England, until Vivien nearly dies in an accident (the aftermath of which takes decades to unravel) when Ginny is 11 and Vivien is eight. Later, after the pair is expelled from school, a 15-year-old Vivien moves to London, and Ginny stays behind, covering up her mother Maud’s alcoholism while trying to assist her father, Clive, with his research on moths and butterflies. After Maud’s death and Clive’s subsequent dementia, Ginny lives alone in the massive house, a brilliant but increasingly reclusive scientist whose insular world is cracked open when Vivien announces her desire to return and live out her days with Ginny. Long-buried secrets float to the surface as Ginny narrates with scientific precision her life’s slow disintegration. Though the lepidopterological jargon and asides can slow things down, Adams expertly captures Ginny’s voice and the dynamics of a deeply troubled family as the book barrels toward its chilling conclusion.