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From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.<\/p>\n
Gone With the Wind<\/p>\n
Margaret Mitchell, 1936 <\/p>\n
I was a late reader and by the time I did learn (aged ten), I was hungry for any available book. That’s how I found myself so caught by this sweeping saga that when selfish, headstrong Scarlett sets her sights on her quieter, plainer sister’s fianc\u00e9, and takes him for herself, I threw the book across the room, only to have to doggedly retrieve it.<\/p>\n
Little Women<\/p>\n
Louisa May Alcott, 1868 <\/p>\n
I loved the depiction of the March sisters and their different, often clashing, personalities. Who was I in relation to Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy? Which most reflected my siblings? Much as I adored it, I took against “Good Wives” with a violence that has made me wary of sequels to this day.<\/p>\n
Cassandra at the Wedding<\/p>\n
Dorothy Baker, 1962 <\/p>\n
This is a brilliantly dark description of the bond, and the efforts to maintain it, of one half of a pair of twins. Cassandra is a divisive and unreliable narrator, posing the question: do we need to be on the side of our main character?<\/p>\n
Sorrow and Bliss<\/p>\n
Meg Mason, 2020<\/p>\n
The sister relationship in this novel is not just witty and full of affection, but provides the thread between tormented, childless Martha and practical, mother-of-four Ingrid. Their bond is one of the many highlights of a moving and deeply funny book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Esther Freud’s new novel, “My Sister and Other Lovers”, is out now and she will be speaking at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3209,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[64,63,457,134],"class_list":{"0":"post-3208","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-books","11":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}