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Summary and Reviews of Shred Sisters by Betsy Lerner

Shred Sisters by Betsy Lerner

Shred Sisters

by Betsy Lerner
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  • First Published:
  • Oct 1, 2024, 272 pages
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About This Book

Book Summary

No one will love you more or hurt you more than a sister.

From Betsy Lerner, celebrated author of The Bridge Ladies, comes a wry and riveting debut novel about family, mental illness, and a hard-won path between two sisters.

It is said that when one person in a family is unstable, the whole family is destabilized. Meet the Shreds. Olivia is the sister in the spotlight until her stunning confidence becomes erratic and unpredictable, a hurricane leaving people wrecked in her wake. Younger sister Amy, cautious and studious to the core, believes in facts, proof, and the empirical world. None of that explains what's happening to Ollie, whose physical beauty and charisma mask the mental illness that will shatter Amy's carefully constructed life.

As Amy comes of age and seeks to find her place—first in academics, then New York publishing, and through a series of troubled relationships—every step brings collisions with Ollie, who slips in and out of the Shred family without warning. Yet for all that threatens their sibling bond, Amy and Ollie cannot escape or deny the inextricable sister knot that binds them.

Spanning two decades, Shred Sisters is an intimate and bittersweet story exploring the fierce complexities of sisterhood, mental health, loss and love. If anything is true it's what Amy learns on her road to self-acceptance: No one will love you more or hurt you more than a sister.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!
Written by Gwyneth Henke for Shred Sisters.

1. Shred Sisters opens with three options for how Amy might begin her narrative: "Here are the ways I could start this story: Olivia was breathtaking. For a long time, I was convinced that she was responsible for everything that went wrong. No one will love you more or hurt you more than a sister." How do you see those three different versions playing out in the novel? Did one interest you more than others? Why?

2. Ollie struggles to feel remorse for her actions, whereas Amy feels a tremendous amount of responsibility for both her own and Ollie's. Is Amy's sense of responsibility for the world around her disproportionate? How do you see that responsibility changing over time, especially as her ...
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Reviews

Media Reviews

Booklist
The perfectly named Shred sisters' ups and downs are wrenching and felicitous, while Amy is a triumph of clashing emotions, self-sabotage and self-preservation, anguish, loyalty, and love. Aerodynamic prose, psychological acuity, tangy wit, knotty family dynamics, and heady twists and turns make for an exhilarating read.

Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
The engaging, thoughtful voice established here goes on to unfold the story of Amy's childhood, coming of age, and early adulthood, all profoundly shaped by the wild trajectory of her older sister: a rebel, a runaway, a mental patient, a dropout, a thief, a missing person ... The story unfolds with the verisimilitude of a memoir: Amy's nuanced relationships with her mother, her father, and her partners are all utterly convincing and relatable ... [Shred Sisters presents] a seamlessly constructed and absorbing fictional world, full of insight about how families work.

Publishers Weekly
Lerner's skilled approach to narrative lies in subtly depicting the destigmatizing of mental illness and the evolution of treatment during the period from the sisters' childhood in the 1970s through the 1990s ... A quietly lovely and ultimately hopeful chronicle of a complicated family.

Author Blurb Bill Clegg, author of Did You Ever Have a Family
Wise to the woe and wonder of families and the bedeviling forces that shape them, Betsy Lerner's masterful new novel, Shred Sisters, delivers you through grief and devastation toward tremulous, exquisite hope.

Author Blurb Leah Hager Cohen, author of Strangers and Cousins and To & Fro
Betsy Lerner's Shred Sisters is a cocktail of raw poetry, needle sharp insights, and propulsive, almost projectile honesty. I can't get over how deftly it pivots from funny to mean to vulnerable to wise, often on a single page. Lerner explores the contours of complicated relationships with an intoxicating ferocity that—we come to realize—amounts to no less than an act of love.

Reader Reviews

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