The Sisters Antipodes is a unique window on the intimate devastations of family betrayal, in equal measure unsettling and engrossing.
When Jane Alison was a child, her family met another that seemed like its mirror: a father in the Foreign Service, a beautiful mother, and two little girls, the younger two - one of them Jane - sharing a birthday.
With so much in common, the two families became almost instantly inseparable.Within months, affairs had ignited between the adults, and before long the pairs had exchanged partners - divorced, remarried, and moved on. As if in a cataclysm of nature, two families were ripped asunder, and two new ones were formed.Two pairs of girls were left in shock, a 'silent, numb shock, like a crack inside stone, not enough to split it but inside, silently fissuring.' And Jane and her stepsister were thrown into a state of silent combat for the affections of their absent fathers - a contest that, as this gorgeous, piercing memoir recounts, would prove tragic.