Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published May 2017
300 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
A groundbreaking novel about the porous boundaries of intimacy and consciousness, and the possibility of forgiveness.
Thunderstorms are rolling across the summer sky. Every time one breaks, Rose Bowan loses consciousness and has vivid, realistic dreams about being in another woman's body.
Is Rose merely dreaming? Or is she, in fact, inhabiting a stranger? Disturbed yet entranced, she sets out to discover what is happening to her, leaving the cocoon of her family's small repertory cinema for the larger, upended world of someone wildly different from herself. Meanwhile her mother is in the early stages of dementia, and has begun to speak for the first time in decades about another haunting presence: Rose's younger sister.
In Little Sister, one woman fights to help someone she has never met, and to come to terms with a death for which she always felt responsible. With the elegant prose and groundbreaking imagination that have earned her international acclaim, Barbara Gowdy explores the astonishing power of empathy, the question of where we end and others begin, and the fierce bonds of motherhood and sisterhood.
"Starred Review. Gowdy sucks readers into this suspenseful, supernatural story like a strong wind in a squall." - Kirkus
"A thrilling, captivating exploration of guilt, the female psyche, and the bonds of womanhood." - Publishers Weekly
"Overall, an intriguing concept but one that doesn't play out quite right." - Booklist
"The intrigue about Harriet's own identity will capture readers' attention, but looking forward to her future identities, once the thunderstorms abate, will sustain it. Recommended." - Library Journal
"At once suspenseful and lyrical, Little Sister transports its characters (and its readers) into different bodies and different eras. Brilliantly, devastatingly, Barbara Gowdy unveils the alternate possibilities hidden within the everyday." - Helen Phillips
"Barbara Gowdy fills me with wonder. It is impossible to categorize her marvelous work, which is the highest compliment I can think of. Little Sister is no exception: a sui generis novel that offers all the excitements of a mystery while also exploring the strange workings of desire, empathy, identity, and memory. I won't sit through another thunderstorm without remembering this book and its generous surprises." - Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum
"Little Sister is only the latest in the long line of complications I've faced when it comes to recommending my favorite Barbara Gowdy book. 'Oh, you haven't read Barbara Gowdy?' I'll say. 'You should try ...' but then what? Which book should I name? The truth is that, in each and every one, she sees so deeply into her characters, and with such brightness, that their very cells seem to glow. Gowdy is, quite simply, a virtuoso." - Kevin Brockmeier
"Little Sister is weird and wonderful. Like all of Gowdy's work, it will subtly change how you look at the everyday." - Ayelet Waldman
This information about Little Sister was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Barbara Gowdy's critically acclaimed six novels and widely anthologized short stories have been published in twenty-four countries and have appeared on best-seller lists throughout the world. She has been a finalist three times for the Governor General's Award and the Roger's Trust Fiction Prize, twice for the Scotia Bank Giller Prize and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, and has been long-listed for the Booker Prize. She is a Trillium Book Award winner, a Member of the Order of Canada, and a Guggenheim Fellow. Ben Marcus, Harper's Magazine, named her as one of the few "terrific" literary realists who have "pounded on the emotional possibilities of their mode, refusing to subscribe to worn-out techniques and story-telling methods."
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