Shred Sisters

by Betsy Lerner

Overview

LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE

No one will love you more or hurt you more than a sister.

“I love this book. It moves like a souped-up pickup truck." — Patti Smith, author of Just Kids and M Train

From Betsy Lerner, celebrated author of The Bridge Ladies, comes a wry and riveting debut novel about family, mental illness, and a hard-won path between two sisters

It is said that when one person in a family is unstable, the whole family is destabilized. Meet the Shreds. Olivia is the sister in the spotlight until her stunning confidence becomes erratic and unpredictable, a hurricane leaving people wrecked in her wake. Younger sister Amy, cautious and studious to the core, believes in facts, proof, and the empirical world. None of that explains what’s happening to Ollie, whose physical beauty and charisma mask the mental illness that will shatter Amy’s carefully constructed life.

As Amy comes of age and seeks to find her place—first in academics, then New York publishing, and through a series of troubled relationships—every step brings collisions with Ollie, who slips in and out of the Shred family without warning. Yet for all that threatens their sibling bond, Amy and Ollie cannot escape or deny the inextricable sister knot that binds them.

Spanning two decades, Shred Sisters is an intimate and bittersweet story exploring the fierce complexities of sisterhood, mental health, loss and love. If anything is true it’s what Amy learns on her road to self-acceptance: No one will love you more or hurt you more than a sister.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802163714
Publisher:	Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date:	10/01/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304

About the Author

Betsy Lerner is the author of the popular advice book to writers, The Forest for the Trees, and the memoirs Food and Loathing and The Bridge Ladies. She received an MFA from Columbia University in Poetry. A publishing professional for over thirty years, Lerner is a literary agent in New York. Shred Sisters is her first novel.

Hometown:

Pelham, New York

Date of Birth:

August 9, 1960

Education:

B.A., New York University, 1982; M.F.A., Columbia University, 1987

Editorial Reviews

08/05/2024

Literary agent Lerner (Food and Loathing, a memoir) traces the impact of mental illness on a pair of sisters in her moving debut novel. Amy, the narrator, describes herself as studious and highly motivated compared to her wild and beautiful older sister, Olivia, who frequently engages in risky or outright illegal behavior, from shoplifting to disappearing for days a time. As the sisters grow up, Ollie’s misbehavior poses greater dangers, not only for herself, but also for their parents and for Amy’s friendships, romantic relationships, and even her career. Ollie’s condition isn’t named until late in the novel; part of Lerner’s skilled approach to narrative lies in subtly depicting the destigmatizing of mental illness and the evolution of treatment during the period from the sisters’ childhood in the 1970s through the 1990s. Lerner’s portrayal of Amy’s five-year course of therapy is particularly rewarding, as Amy explores the limits and strengths of her bond with Olivia. The result is a quietly lovely and ultimately hopeful chronicle of a complicated family. Agent: David Black, David Black Agency. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Shred Sisters

Longlisted for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize

A Most Anticipated Book of 2024 from Literary Hub

“The engaging, thoughtful voice established here goes on to unfold the story of Amy’s childhood, coming of age, and early adulthood, all profoundly shaped by the wild trajectory of her older sister: a rebel, a runaway, a mental patient, a dropout, a thief, a missing person . . . The story unfolds with the verisimilitude of a memoir: Amy’s nuanced relationships with her mother, her father, and her partners are all utterly convincing and relatable . . . [Shred Sisters presents] a seamlessly constructed and absorbing fictional world, full of insight about how families work.” — Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“Lerner’s skilled approach to narrative lies in subtly depicting the destigmatizing of mental illness and the evolution of treatment during the period from the sisters’ childhood in the 1970s through the 1990s . . . A quietly lovely and ultimately hopeful chronicle of a complicated family.” — Publishers Weekly

“Shred Sisters is a brilliantly written, emotionally gripping saga that delves into the complexity of sisterhood, mental health, and resilience. Spanning decades, this utterly engrossing novel asks readers many profound and pressing questions: Can we fully know the ones we love? Does love always require self-sacrifice? Can we understand ourselves without understanding our family? One of the best books I've read in years.” — Chloé Cooper Jones, two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and author of Easy Beauty.

“Wise to the woe and wonder of families and the bedeviling forces that shape them, Betsy Lerner’s masterful new novel, Shred Sisters, delivers you through grief and devastation toward tremulous, exquisite hope.” — Bill Clegg, author of Did You Ever Have a Family

“Betsy Lerner's Shred Sisters is a cocktail of raw poetry, needle sharp insights, and propulsive, almost projectile honesty. I can't get over how deftly it pivots from funny to mean to vulnerable to wise, often on a single page. Lerner explores the contours of complicated relationships with an intoxicating ferocity that—we come to realize—amounts to no less than an act of love.” — Leah Hager Cohen, author of Strangers and Cousins and To & Fro

“The Shreds are in devastating and hilarious pain. Betsy Lerner has turned her memoirist’s eye on a fictional family with candid and surprising results.” — Jill Eisenstadt, author of From Rockaway and Swell

“I loved this poignant story of a younger sister growing and forming herself around her older sister's erratic behavior. Betsy Lerner articulates moments I have observed but never put into words, and I both laughed out loud and was deeply moved. A brilliant novel.” — Alice Elliott Dark, author of Fellowship Point

“Betsy Lerner has created a richly layered family novel that manages to be raucously funny, insightful, and tender—often on the same page. I’m not sure how she did it, but I gleefully went along for the ride and was bereft when it was over. I will be thinking about the Shred sisters for a long time.” — Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, author of Good Company 

“Deliciously compelling, as poignant as it is funny, and sneakily profound about the myriad ways family shapes and undoes us, Shred Sisters will take over your mind and heart (and life!) until the very last page.” — Edan Lepucki, author of California and Time's Mouth

“I love this book. It moves like a souped-up pickup truck.” — Patti Smith, author of Just Kids and M Train

From the Publisher

★ 2024-07-04
The younger of two siblings grows up in the shadow of her beautiful, reckless, mentally ill sister.

“Here are the ways I could start this story,” Amy Shred says, offering three choices in a brief prologue to memoirist and literary agent Lerner’s debut novel. “Olivia was breathtaking.” “For a long time, I was convinced that she was responsible for everything that went wrong.” “No one will love you more or hurt you more than a sister.” The engaging, thoughtful voice established here goes on to unfold the story of Amy’s childhood, coming of age, and early adulthood, all profoundly shaped by the wild trajectory of her older sister: a rebel, a runaway, a mental patient, a dropout, a thief, a missing person. Amy herself—called Bunny or Bun in the family—is the classic supersmart miserable outsider, bullied at school, friendless, always bewildered at the utter unfairness of life. What could be a nice normal Connecticut Jewish family is anything but as Amy’s parents are pushed far beyond their ability to cope, and ultimately their ability to stay married. Amy finishes a science major at college in three years and throws herself into graduate work at a lab at Columbia University, zigzags into publishing, finally loses her virginity, meets the man she will marry, and goes into therapy. The story unfolds with the verisimilitude of a memoir: Amy’s nuanced relationships with her mother, her father, and her partners are all utterly convincing and relatable. Her mother, Lorraine, is a particularly fine creation, both a very specific East Coast Jewish type and an archetypal maternal presence. “In the months and years after she died, I often saw the world through her eyes, as if I had inherited her mantle of judgment, her scoreboard in the sky.” Many of us know that feeling exactly.

A seamlessly constructed and absorbing fictional world, full of insight about how families work.

Kirkus Reviews