THE SISTERS LIVINGSTON

by Natalie Anderson Scott ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 15, 1946

A story that seems oddly unAmerican- set in New York and its environs- a story of the demanding, stultifying mesh of family obligations, of destructive interrelationship, of an emotional base that is not really affection. There's the ineffectual, ageing father, once a literary figure- still hoping for a job and maintaining his core of pride; there's Hasel, with a none-too-savory emotional past, now a widow after her husband's suicide, and seeking escape from the family she sought to dominate, by occasional emotional lapses. And then there are the two younger sisters, both clutching at strews of hope of marriage, but wrecking what glimmer of chance they had by passionate entanglements with ratters. Always it is the call of the family that brings them back- the call, too, of insistent, grinding poverty, penny pinching, the urge to keep up a false front -- and to maintain an unreal detachment from life. As a psychological study it has its hold; as a novel, it fails through its very remoteness.

Pub Date: May 15, 1946

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Dutton

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1946

Categories: FICTION