Think about a family’s description of its siblings. He’s the bossy big brother. She’s our genius. You always were the shy one. It’s how parents talk about babies, not only with broad labels that don’t seem to bend but also in constant comparison to their brothers and sisters. Siblings are expected to love and help each other, even as they’re often pitted against one another for approval and affection. Really, it’s a wonder more than one of them ever survives.
My oldest sister, Andree, told me last month that she asked me once, nearly 20 years ago, why I seemed closer to another of our siblings and I responded: “You and I just don’t have that much in common.” I’m ashamed for saying it, and even more for forgetting I had. Eight years my senior, Andree was often the one feeding, watching over, and cleaning up the baby (that is to say, me), yet with one sentence, I had made it sound as if the connection between us was insubstantial.
I offered a mortified apology. She waved it off and explained that she told her husband at the time, “She’ll be back. I’ll wait.”
In that moment, I was the brash mean sister, and she was the quiet, loyal one. But trust me, I could dig up other stories on other days. And with four kids in our family, there were times when I was the sister on the outside looking in. When I wrote The Better Sister, I knew how the dynamics worked. Little sister Chloe was “the honour-roll student with big dreams”. Big sis Nicky “floated from job to job and man to man”. The two of them grow apart – the gap assisted by Chloe’s decision to marry Nicky’s ex-husband, Adam, and raise Nicky’s son, Ethan. Both women think they know their roles in the story, but then Adam is murdered, Ethan becomes a suspect, and the two adult sisters have to reunite.
An entire sub-genre of domestic suspense focuses on marriages that aren’t what they seem, but the bonds and conflicts between siblings are just as complicated. Here are 10 of my favourites.
1. The Good Daughter by Karin Slaughter
As young girls, sisters Charlie and Sam Quinn were present during a violent burglary that left their mother dead. Twenty-eight years later, after Charlie finds herself at the centre of a new crime that devastates her small town once again, the two women dig into painful memories they tried to leave buried long ago. This is Slaughter at her best, and that’s really saying something.
2. What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman
Before the recent wave of popular “are they or aren’t they unreliable?” narrators, the brilliantly talented Lippman told the story of a woman who claims to be Heather Bethany, one of two adolescent sisters last seen at a shopping mall in 1975. Lippman has said that this was inspired by the real-life disappearance of two sisters in suburban Washington DC when the author herself was a teenager. Her fictional rendering of these girls is careful and beautiful.
3. The Favourite Sister by Jessica Knoll
Anyone tempted to think that reality television has nothing to tell us about contemporary politics and society has not been paying attention. Knoll mines the rich territory of back-biting, ratings-grubbing shows to delicious effect, but her character spotlight is on sisters Brett and Kelly Courtney. In childhood, Kelly was the star, and Brett was the problem child. Now the tables have turned, and the sisters’ lifelong rivalry becomes combustible.
4. Flowers in the Attic by VC Andrews
I remember the dog-eared paperbacks getting passed around the playground. My friends and I would huddle in away to sneak in a few more pages about the Dollanganger children before we had to go back to class. Four children – the older Cathy and Chris and the younger twins, Carrie and Cory – are locked away in their wealthy grandmother’s attic after the death of their father. If you don’t know why, or what happens next, you really should go read book one in this series now.
5. The Wych Elm by Tana French
I’m cheating a little with this one, but hear me out. In this masterpiece, Toby Hennessy returns to the ancestral home to recuperate after surviving a violent attack and to look after his ailing uncle. The family he reconnects with are technically his cousins Susanna and Leon, but the bonds and rivalries are wholly sibling-like. Toby says in line one: “I’ve always considered myself to be, basically, a lucky person.” French uses the stories of these cousins to develop a smart, nuanced, and prescient exploration of the ways that race, gender, sexuality, and other factors beyond our control skew the distribution of what we call luck.
6. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
Nick and Margo (“Go”) Dunne are one of crime fiction’s best sibling pairings. Even as suspicions mount, Go remains loyal to her brother. As Nick explains, “Go is truly the one person in the entire world I am totally myself with. I don’t feel the need to explain my actions to her. I don’t clarify, I don’t doubt, I don’t worry. I don’t tell her everything, not any more, but I tell her more than anyone else by far.” Any sister who suspects she has a scoundrel for a brother, but remains fiercely protective regardless, “gets” this relationship.
7. Sister by Rosamund Lupton
I was lucky enough to read an advance copy of this. I remember checking the jacket three times to make sure that it was actually a debut, because it was written with such confidence. When older, more reliable sister Bee goes looking for her younger, flakier sister Tess, she expects to find her off on her usual antics. Instead, she learns that Tess is dead, supposedly by suicide. Bee’s ensuing search for the truth is a moving and beautifully written tribute to sisterly love. It’s also got a jaw-dropping twist.
8. Atonement by Ian McEwan
Say I’m cheating again, but this one definitely has siblings: Briony and Cecilia Tallis. And there’s a crime, an arrest, a prison sentence, and the possibility of a wrongful conviction, so I’m going ahead and calling Atonement a thriller. Whatever the labels, this sprawling saga is one of the greatest novels, and the sisterly connection between Briony and Cecilia is at its beginning and end and in its heart.
9. My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
In this hit debut from Nigerian writer Braithwaite, Ayoola is the messed-up beautiful sister who has an unfortunate habit of killing the men she attracts. Korede is the practical one who knows how to clean up afterwards. Braithwaite takes the “good sister/bad sister” set-up and the fine line between sisterly loyalty and rivalry in an entirely fresh and darkly hilarious direction.
10. If She Wakes by Michael Koryta
The buzz in advance of Koryta’s 14th novel is loud. Tara Beckley is a student driving a visiting professor around a quaint college town in Maine when a massive car crash kills the professor and leaves Tara in what doctors first assume is a vegetative state. But as Tara emerges from her coma, she is conscious, alert, and able to communicate by moving her eyes. She’s also being targeted by a killer who can’t get to Tara without also facing down her tough-as-nails sister, Shannon. Mark your calendars for this one: It’s out on 13 June. (14 May in the US.)
• The Better Sister by Alafair Burke is published by Faber & Faber. To order a copy, go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p on orders over £15.
