Invisible Sisters
A Memoir
by Jessica Handler
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Pub Date Sep 15 2015 | Archive Date Sep 15 2015
Description
When Jessica Handler was eight years old, her younger sister Susie was diagnosed with leukemia. To any family, the diagnosis would have been upending, but to the Handlers, whose youngest daughter, Sarah, had been born with a rare, fatal blood disorder, it was an unimaginable verdict. Struck by the unlikelihood of siblings sick with diametrically opposed illnesses, the medical community labeled the Handlers’ situation a bizarre coincidence. To their mother, the girls’ unlikely diagnoses constituted a reverse miracle—the sort no one wishes for. By the time she was nine years old, Jessica had begun to introduce herself as the “well sibling.”
Deeply moving and exquisitely written, Invisible Sisters is an extraordinary story of coming of age as the odd one out—as the daughter of progressive Jewish parents who moved to the South to participate in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, as the healthy sister among sick, and eventually, as the only sister left standing. In a book that is as hard to forget as it is to put down, Handler captures the devastating effects of illness and death on a family and the triumphant account of one woman’s enduring journey to step out of the shadow of loss to find herself anew.
A Note From the Publisher
New in paperback. Includes a new author interview and teaching guide.
Advance Praise
—Publishers Weekly
“With a sure grasp of revelatory detail, the author recalls homely
verities from a vanished life. Her memory piece is an elegy for her dead
sisters, who are not quite lost as long as they live in her thoughts. A
heartfelt, painful family saga, skillfully told by a survivor.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Some memoirs are affecting because they are universal, some because they are unique. Jessica Handler's Invisible Sisters
derives its gut-punch power from being both. . . Handler tells this
story with the lyrical elegance and cool remove of Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking—the highest praise possible for any memoir of loss.”
—Teresa Weaver, Atlanta Magazine
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9780820348926 |
| PRICE | $20.95 (USD) |
Links
Average rating from 5 members
Featured Reviews
Kerrie I, Reviewer
A very real, heart wrenching account of a woman facing loss and grief
Sarah R, Educator
Brutal and beautifully written, "Invisible Sisters" is a portrait of a family gone off the rails in the wake of unimaginable tragedy. Jessica Handler explores her experience as the "well sibling" to sisters afflicted by serious illness, and as the daughter of parents who struggled to hold their lives together in the face of grief, confusion, and crushing responsibility. Without ever devolving into self-pity, Handler traces her own emotional journey toward maturity and insight.
Karen O, Reviewer
Having just read a host of memoirs about loss, grief, illness, strong mothers, tormented fathers who fall apart during hard times and excruciating circumstances Invisible Sisters stands out as being one of the best. Jessica Handler's memoir about the death of her two sisters, and the disintegration of her family, especially her father is searing and honest and matter-of-fact and I inhaled this book over the course of a day.
Like many families the Handlers did not talk about the death of their daughter, Susie who died at age 8 from Leukemia. Since the time that Susie was diagnosed her parents managed this life-altering fact in opposite ways and after her death her "parents began the slow and terrible turning away from one another that erodes families facing the death of a child." Very soon after her father mentally and psychically fell apart and the family that Jessica knew was gone. For Jessica, the "well" daughter, there was expectations to meet and hopes to fulfill, conflicts to mediate between parents and the need to protect; her other sister, her mother and mostly herself. Lost, without much support she left home early, bereft and alone with death as her companion.
I understand all of this. As someone who grew up with the specter of death shadowing my family there is no way out of it terrorizing you. So you can tentatively try to make friends with it, you can accept that you will be frighted and sickened and devastated by fear, be immobilized by it, live life as fully as possible, forget about it and do all of this at once. This is what I treasure about Jessica's smart and gracious book. She comes to know this and as she worked to save herself, with the support and love of her mother, husband and community of people around her, she hands herself back a life full of meaning and peace.
Thank you NetGalley for allowing me to review this book for an honest opinion.
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