The Sisters Antipodes by Jane Alison

The Sisters Antipodes by Jane Alison

A gorgeous and deeply intimate memoir about families breaking apart

When Jane Alison was a child, her family met another that seemed like its mirror: a father in the Foreign Service, a beautiful mother, and two little girls, the younger two (one of them Jane) sharing a birthday. The families became inseparable almost instantly. Within months, however, affairs ignited between the adults, and before long the parents exchanged partners, then divorced, remarried, and moved on. Two pairs of girls were left in shock, a silent, numb shock, like a crack inside stone, not enough to split it but inside, silently fissuring that would prove tragic.

The Love-Artist, The Marriage of the Sea, and Natives and Exotics are the works of Jane Alison. She is a professor at the University of Miami and Queens University in Charlotte, where she teaches in the MFA programs.