Appearances

by Sondra Helene

Overview

Samantha—the fashionable wife of a successful businessman and doting mother of one—struggles to negotiate the spheres of intimacy between her husband and her family of origin. Samantha loves her husband, Richard, and she loves her sister, Elizabeth. But the two of them can barely exist in the same room, which has caused the entire family years of emotional distress. Yet it’s not until Samantha’s sister is diagnosed at age forty-three with lung cancer that her family and her marriage are tipped into full-blown crisis. A story of love, loss, forgiveness, learning to live with grief, and healing, Appearances will resonate with anyone who has ever experienced tension in their familial relationships—even as it serves as a poignant reminder that no amount of privilege can protect us from family conflicts, marital difficulty, or mortality.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781631524998
Publisher:	She Writes Press
Publication date:	04/09/2019
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Sondra Helene is a board member and writer at GrubStreet, Boston’s center for literary life. Her publications include “Jewish Magic Protected My Sister” in Lilith Magazine, “The Switch” in Voices of Caregiving: Stories of Courage, Comfort and Strength; and “Losing My Sister and the Long Road Back” on better50.com. She has studied fiction and nonfiction at GrubStreet, the Fine Arts Work Center, Gotham Writers Workshop, the Sirenland Writers Conference, and Kripalu. She is a graduate of Ithaca College and Columbia University. A past president of the Friends of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, she has also been involved with fund-raising for the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Lung Cancer Research Foundation. Helene is a Life Member of Hadassah, a member of Combined Jewish Philanthropies, and a former overseer of the Boston Ballet. She has two grown children and lives outside of Boston with her husband.

Editorial Reviews

" . . . Primal themes of romance and family; this novel tackles them with detail and realism . . . and makes quietly clear how precious any extra time with a loved one can be. “
— Kirkus Reviews

“ Appearances gets to the heart of what happens when illness interrupts the good life of a seemingly close family: it strains the bonds of a fraying marriage and tests the love of two impossibly close sisters: one sick, the other trying to prepare for life without her. A tense and moving drama about loss and love and what matters most.”
—Laura Zigman, New York Times best-selling author of Animal Husbandry

“Sondra Helene captures the fragility of human relationships, in all their forms. How brief we are here, how complicated, and how little time there is to put on pretense.”
—Kerry Cohen, author of Lush and Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity

“ Appearances is a powerful first novel that is for any woman who has struggled with the complicated roles of sister, wife, mother and daughter. Sondra Helene is a writer to watch.”
—Elin Hilderbrand, New York Times best-selling author of The Perfect Couple

From the Publisher

2019-01-21

"Sisters," the old Irving Berlin song, winkingly covers primal themes of romance and family; this novel tackles them with detail and realism.

Samantha's husband, Richard, a highly successful businessman in Boston, cannot stand her sister, Elizabeth, and is only slightly more tolerant of everyone else in their close-knit family. For years, Samantha has felt the strain of this rift, and divorce seems imminent. Then Elizabeth is diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. Samantha devotes herself to her sister's care and puts her marriage on ice for the duration. While the marriage is the frame, most of the novel concerns Samantha's experience accompanying her sister to the treatments that extend her life for a few years and supporting her and her family. Privileged with wealth and whiteness, all the characters spend time at elegant restaurants and in luxurious vacation spots; these are the only lighter moments of the book, though the tone throughout is measured, as if appearances weigh on Samantha even as a narrator. Still, she manages to convey the inner torture she feels over her husband's treatment of her family and then over her sister's demise. One thread of the novel is troubling, though as realistic as the rest: Richard's tantrums about Samantha's family and demands that she choose him over them are textbook emotional abuse. Both spouses eventually work on revising their relationship, going out casually and vacationing together, but Samantha confesses to the reader that it's like she has "marital PTSD." She's not wrong. These are the choices many women are faced with.

In addition to the questions of marriage, this is a portrait of late-stage cancer that makes quietly clear how precious any extra time with a loved one can be.

Kirkus Reviews