The Perfect Sister
Subtitle: What Draws Us Together, What Drives Us Apart
Publisher: Harcourt
Published: June 7, 2004
Language: eng
Number of pages: 304
ISBN-13: 9780151008957
First sentence: NOW THAT SHE'S in her sixties and starting to think about mortality, Ellie told me she worries about who will die first, her identical twin sister, Emma, or herself: "I'd rather go together."
Description: "Our siblings are our first peers and often our last link to our families. But, sisters who grow up under the same roof actually experience very different families; they inhabit distinct positions, express unique talents, and elicit different responses from their parents." "Marcia Millman interviewed sisters to examine how these complex bonds are formed and how they keep changing throughout life, for better and for worse. Millman has discovered that sisters who are able to fully appreciate the different realities they experienced as children are more likely to be close as adults. In this book there are sisters who were always close and sisters who became friends later; there are sisters who shared their childhoods but developed painful rifts as adults. But even those who are at odds often feel deeply attached to one another - perhaps because, as Millman finds, the sister bond is inseparable from a woman's connection to her mother. Still, all women can transform their relationships as long as we relate to the sister in the present and not only to the sister of the past."--BOOK JACKET.