Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0689121296 ISBN 13: 9780689121296

Publisher: Atheneum, 1991

In a remote, crumbling house in the Fens live four sisters - Agatha, Milly, and Ellen and Esther, identical twins so closely linked as to be almost one person. They have lived there all their lives, trapped still by the fear of their dead father, who governs his daughters' lives from beyond the grave. And then there is George, another inhabitant, imprisoned in the cellar. Bit by bit macabre events come to light; events that transformed an idyllic country childhood into a world of eccentric isolation.

About the Author:

Jilly Bond has worked extensively in theater and radio for the past twelve years. Her credits on stage include Miranda (and Antonio!) in "The Tempest", Fiona, the girl, in "When I Was a Girl I Used to Scream and Shout", and Anita in Ayckbourn s "A Small Family Business". She is regularly heard in dramas for Radio 4 and the BBC World Service.

From Publishers Weekly:

"You live a simple life here away from corruption," an abusive father tells his four motherless daughters in this eerily tragic and mesmerizing first novel. "I cannot risk you becoming corrupted." Virtually imprisoned in their rural house even after their father's death, the four grow into a tormented old age. Milly, the narrator, recalls events from their youth and relates the decayed routines they follow after more than 60 years have elapsed, weaving an ever more nightmarish tale. Querulous older sister Aggie and younger twins Ellen and Esther (invariably called Ellenanesther because of their inseparability) have, like Milly, been scarred forever by the suicide of their warm and once-worldly mother, who, after years of being battered by her husband, drowned herself during the girls' childhood; by the cruelty of their father; and by their almost total isolation. A profusion of gothic elements--illegitimate conceptions; incest; concealed murder; a freak kept hidden in a cellar--is kept in place by Glaister's careful narrative structure and her empathy for Milly.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.