ISBN: 9780099518563    Publisher: Random House Year of publishing: 2008     Format:  Paperback No of Pages: 240        Language: English

Even as little girls, Sarah and Emily are very different from each other. Emily looks up to her wiser and more stable older sister and is jealous of her relationship with their absent father, and later her seemingly golden marriage. The path she chooses for herself is less safe and conventional and her love affairs never really satisfy her. Although the bond between them endures, gradually the distance between the two women grows, until a tragic event throws their relationship into focus one last time. Richard Yates's masterful novel follows the two sisters from their childhood in the 1920s through the challenges of their adult choices, and depicts the different ways they seek to escape from their tarnished family past.
Read less

Richard Yates was born in 1926 in Yonkers, New York.After serving in the US Army during the Second World War, he worked as a publicity writer for the Remington Rand Corporation, and for a brief period in the sixties as a speech writer for Senator Robert Kennedy. His prize-winning stories first appeared in 1953 and his first novel, 'Revolutionary Road', was nominated for the National Book Award in 1961.He is the author of eight other works, including the novels 'A Good School', 'The Easter Parade' and 'Disturbing the Peace', and two collections of short stories, 'Eleven Kinds of Loneliness' and 'Liars in Love'.Richard Yates was twice divorced and the father of three daughte He died in 1992. Lionel Shriver was born in the United States and now lives in London. She is the author of 'The Female of the Species, Checker and the Derailleurs,' 'The Bleeding Heart' , 'Ordinary Decent Criminals, A Perfectly Good Family, Double Fault', 'The Post-Birthday World' and 'So Much for That'. Her seventh novel, 'We Need to Talk About Kevin', won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2005.
Read less