The Sisters Mortland: Summary and book reviews of The Sisters Mortland by Sally Beauman, plus links to an excerpt from The Sisters Mortland and a biography of Sally Beauman.
The Sisters Mortland
by Sally Beauman
Hardcover: Jan 2006,
448 pages.
Paperback: Feb 2007,
448 pages.
"If I didn't spy, I'd be in the dark eternally. I live in a maze of
unknowing - Maisie's maze - and I hate it. I need to be informed."
Summer 1967: Thirteen-year-old Maisie is at her family's home, a decaying
medieval abbey in the heart of rural Suffolk. Lucas, a student and friend, is
painting a portrait of Maisie and her older sisters, Julia and Finn. In turn,
Maisie embarks upon a portrait of her own: She begins an account of her family
and of a summer in which their lives will irrevocably, and terribly, change.
She introduces us to arrogant, beautiful Julia; to intellectual, magnetic
Finn; to honorable, conventional Nicholas, a neighbor training to be a doctor;
and Gypsy-blooded Daniel Nunn, a village friend to the sisters and a longtime
idol of Maisie's.
More than twenty years later, Lucas's now-famous portrait of the three
sisters is the centerpiece in a major London retrospective of his work. Daniel,
who's risen from rural poverty to a wealthy but soulless and troubled London
existence, finds himself still obsessed with the three sisters and haunted by
the summer of 1967. Now he embarks on a journey to understand what happened to
their lives - and seek redemption for his own.
A dramatic, atmospheric novel in a grand storytelling tradition, The
Sisters Mortland is beguiling, complex, hauntingly sad, and often dazzlingly funny. A
tour de force of tales within tales, it sets the capstone on bestselling author
Sally Beauman's literary career.
Publishers Weekly
With her latest gothic page-turner, Beauman (Rebecca's Tale) weaves a spellbinding tale of three charismatic English sisters and their irresistible pull on the men in their orbit. .....this well-paced, haunting novel will captivate Beauman's fans.
Library Journal - Laurel M Bliss
Like Lucas's painting of the three sisters, this novel's rich layers blend into a powerful whole.
Booklist - Carolyn Kubisz
She carefully withholds details until she is ready to reveal them--and not a moment sooner--in an absorbing story of how people react in the face of tragedy.
The Independent
The reader is right there, in Suffolk, totally absorbed and longing to discover more, seduced by this most dynamic and alluring storyteller."
Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of The Breakdown Lane and The Deep End of the Ocean
Despite searing grief and longing burned into every sentence, Sally
Beauman's The Sisters Mortland will beguile readers from the first page and
haunt them long, long after the last.
Guardian - Lisa Allardice
Beauman is a captivating and artful storyteller, capable of making us believe the unbelievable.
Recent Reader Reviews
Rated of 5
by C.Sloan What is The Point In the beginning I eagerly read forward, but The Sisters Mortland soon became tedious. reading. I finished the book because it was my book group selection. I found Sister's to be a gothic want to be that missed its mark.
Rated of 5
by S. Caulfield The Sisters Mortland: A Masterpiece of Its Time By far, the most intriguing and absorbing novel I have ever had the pleasure to read. Its labyrinth of dark corners and unfolding secrets kept me page turning until the very end. Beauman has artfully produced a true, breathing classic.
About the author: Sally Beauman was born in Devon, England and read English Literature at Girton
College, Cambridge where she graduated in 1966. Immediately after graduating, she went to live in America for three years,
first in Washington DC, and then New York. During her time there she traveled
extensively, visiting most of the states in the union: her experiences in the
South in the year prior to the assassination of Martin Luther King, provided
some of the background for her first novel, Destiny (1987). It
earned her a record sum for a first novel: published in the US by Bantam, it
became a New York Times number 1 bestseller, and went on to top the bestseller
lists in the UK, Canada, Australia and South Africa. It has never been out of
print since, and - widely misunderstood when first published - is now seen as a
feminist, genre-subversive novel, a study of a materialist woman in a
materialist man's world.
Since then she has published about 10 novels. She has also published
two non-fiction works, King Henry V (1976)...
Brilliant and utterly enthralling in its depiction of childhood, love and war, England and class. At its center this is a profound–and profoundly moving–exploration of shame, forgiveness and the difficulty of absolution.
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Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of The Breakdown Lane and The Deep End of the Ocean
of 5
by C.Sloan
of 5
by S. Caulfield
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