“Sisters” ends with a magnificent twist: Daisy Johnson’s new novel is reviewed in The Boston Globe
At the beginning of “Sisters” by British writer Daisy Johnson, the reader learns that something terrible has happened on the tennis courts at a school in Oxford. Two teenage sisters are involved in an incident as a result of bullying. Their mother, Sheela, who struggles with depression, has whisked them away to their aunt’s house […]
Sisters by Daisy Johnson, review: a lithe, dizzyingly good Gothic thriller
In 2018, Daisy Johnson became the youngest author ever to be shortlisted for the Booker Prize – she was 27 – with her mesmerising debut Everything Under, about a difficult mother-daughter relationship. In her second novel – a lithe, dizzyingly good Gothic thriller – she mines another seam of complicated familial love: the bond between siblings. Click here to read […]
Sarah Leipciger and Mary Paulson-Ellis are longlisted for The HWA Gold Crown Longlist 2020
Jung Chang is longlisted for The HWA Non-Fiction Crown Longlist 2020 for BIG SISTER, LITTLE SISTER, RED SISTER
The darkly riveting relationship between teenage siblings is explored in a gothic tale from the Booker-shortlisted author
July and September are the teenage sisters of this eerie, absorbing novel; they are as near to twins as two girls born 10 months apart can be. As we enter their story they are heading north – or so it appears – with their mother Sheela, driving from Oxford to Yorkshire, to a broken down […]
Act of Grace by Anna Krien review – a hugely impressive first novel
Gerry brings a snake skin home to his mother one day, hoping to scare her. Instead she stares at it wistfully. “It must be an incredible feeling,” she says. “Imagine being new again.” Almost everyone in Australian journalist and poet Anna Krien’s hugely impressive first novel, which connects an Iraqi brothel, a Melbourne street piano […]
Sisters by Daisy Johnson review — Spooky, sensuous, sensational: a tale of two sisters
In the space of two books Daisy Johnson has built such a strong game in certain areas — mothers and daughters, isolated homes, the creepier workings of the human body — that pretty soon writing about any of those things will look like a pale imitation of her. After her exceptional story collection Fen and her debut […]
‘Rachel Long’s My Darling from the Lions, nominated for the Forward first collection prize, is alive with a breathless energy.’
Rachel Long’s My Darling from the Lions (Picador, £10.99), nominated for the Forward first collection prize, is alive with a breathless energy. The founder of the Octavia Poetry Collective for Womxn of Colour, Long writes with keen wit and delight in rendering the world new; an estate is described as “built like Tetris”, afros become orbs, dolls become a […]
Daisy Johnson: ‘It’s not an easy time to be looking at yourself or other people’
Daisy Johnson and I are talking about compost. She never thought she’d write about the Fens, she explains, but she ended up revisiting her childhood landscape in her debut book, a short story collection that won the Edge Hill short story prize. She also didn’t anticipate reworking the Oedipus myth that had so enthralled her in […]
Sisters by Daisy Johnson review: a haunting, page-turning Gothic fantasy
The sisters have been involved in an unspeakable thing. Daisy Johnson, whose debut novel, Everything Under, was shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize, opens her new psychological drama with July and September (named after their birth months, having arrived just 10 months apart) being uprooted and taken to start a new life somewhere seemingly unknown. […]