Product Description

The story of the relationship between two sisters--Hedda, an intelligent writer of angry feminist novels, and Stella, a woman who has married and divorced several times. Within the novel is Hedda's own novel-in-progress of two Victorian sisters: one is a gifted astronomer; both are spinsters; and both may be on the verge of madness. A compelling blend of overlapping stories and unsettling dualities.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #595062 in Books
• Published on: 1991-07-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Goldstein ( The Mind-Body Problem ; The Late-Summer Passion of a Woman of Mind ) has cleverly constructed a highly imaginative tale that commands close analysis. Hedda, a grotesque, tormented author of angry feminist novels, has exiled herself to a gloomy New England house, where her grim solitude is interrupted only by phone calls from her silly but dangerous sister, Stella. Hedda is writing a Victorian novel, in Henry Jamesian style, about Henry's brother William, the 19th-century psychologist. In the work, William is sent to study two sisters--one a brilliant recluse, the other possibly murderous--with pasts as murky as Hedda's. Characters are mirrored, parallel plots overlap and several dark sisters--gifted with imaginative intellects but viewed as morbidly deviant--are doomed to destruction. Although this book may at times seem an unstructured melange of repeated themes, images and phrases inspired by 19th-century literature, psychology, metaphysics and feminist history, its disjointedness is purposeful and provocative. Readers who persevere will be rewarded by this witty, literary tour de force.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
A novel within a novel, this story of psychic misunderstandings and demonic possession occurs in two different centuries to two different characters. Hedda, an eccentric feminist author and creator of AJW (angry Jewish women) heroines, is blocked in her attempt to write a novel about an incident in the life of 19th-century New England psychologist William James. Finally, she allows the novel to write itself in the style of William's famed brother Henry. William fails to understand both his neurasthenic sister and his latest client, who fears her sister is possessed by the spirit of an astronomer. As the bizarre tale reaches its tragic climax, Hedda herself verges on mental collapse. Although knowledge of the life and works of Henry James would enhance the reader's enjoyment of this clever novel, this book can be savored on its own for its excellent characterization, wit, and compelling plot. Recommended.
- Judith F. Bradley, Acad. of Holy Cross Lib., Kensington, Md.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
One of those almost too-clever and erudite novels about identity and the nature of women that challenge the head, but neglect the heart, by novelist and philosophy teacher Goldstein (The Mind-Body Problem, The Late Summer Passions of a Woman of Mind). Hedda, a writer of fierce feminist novels whose protagonists are known as JAW's--''Jewish Angry Women''--has fled to Maine to write her next novel in undisturbed isolation. Up in the wooden tower of the house, she begins to write a story about two nameless sisters but is interrupted by calls from her own sister in New York, the much divorced and analyzed Stella. Stella uses these calls to repeat unfavorable reviews of Hedda's novels and complain about her analyst. The two sisters are not close, but they are linked by a common childhood of misery and maternal cruelty. As Hedda struggles with this novel, quite unlike her others, she finds Jamesian characters and style, as well as William and Henry James themselves, taking over her story. Dr. Austin Sloper (Washington Square) appears and calls in William James to investigate the two spinster sisters (now named). Alice Bonnet, plain and unimaginative, is worried about the unwomanly intellectual pursuits of her sister, brilliant and beautiful Vivianna, who studies the stars from a wooden tower. Identities are confused; parallel plots unfold; Stella begins writing successful detective stories; and the three Jameses--William, Henry and Alice--add further commentary, but, meanwhile, Hedda herself is descending into a madness provoked by her realization that ``personal identity is, even while we live, a plumped-up phantasm, a frightened fiction...to keep the wider sea from breaking through.'' Fortunately, sisterly help is at hand. Witty, learned, and nicely satirical, Goldstein's latest should offer more than a chance for the literate to identify allusions and literary figures, but it doesn't. And Hedda and Stella, whose story should hold it all together, get lost in the brilliant throng. Disappointing. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

What?!
I can't believe that there are no reviews of this novel! Rebecca Goldstein is a fascinating writer: to jump from novel writing to a probing study of Kurt Gödel is not what one expects. This novel is a quantum jump (ahem) from her first two, which are (good) academic tales. It is not an easy, linear read (as she says, she presumes a lot from her readers), but extremely evocative, picking up on themes from the earliers ones. If you don't mind being challenged (if you like Iris Murdoch, for example), give it a try. Can't wait to read the later ones.

Dark Sister is, well...dark...oh, so dark....
This is the 6th book I have read of Goldsteins', and it is definitely the creepiest!

For the first time, her protagonist is not beautiful - quite the contrary; Hedda is grotesquely ugly. Hedda is the author of complex 19th-century prose involving two sisters that turn out to be the same person along with the character William and his brother Henry James. Much of this novel is Hedda's book interchanged with what happens in Hedda's real and psycological life - which takes place in an old light house.

The back-and-forth between Hedda's prose and real existence is sometimes challenging to read, and I found her real life so much more intriguing and readable than her book. There is very heavy language at times - I felt like I missed a lot here and there; however, more often I felt so detached from the story that I did not really bother to reread what I might have lost... Other times Goldstein's language sparkles, which is why I enjoy reading her so much.

All in all, this story did not grab me all that much. Jewish references (another Goldstein trademark) were scant and not seemingly conclusive to the story. The Dark Sister was not a bad book at all; however, of Goldsteins' it is probably my least favorite...

A dark analysis
I've never reviewed a book on amazon.com before, but feel compelled to rate this one, since it deserves, and so far lacks, a "five star". Hedda, a feminist writer with a barren social life, finds an isolated tower to write a new book. Her characters inhabit her, or she inhabits them, drawing her into the world of William James and a mysterious woman astronomer, unexpected revelations, and a range of unusual mental, maybe even psychic phenomena.

A bit difficult to read at times, but completely compelling. The first time I tried to read it could not get past the first chapter. The second time, I reached the second chapter and was hooked. I knew nothing about William James, and still know little, but this is not a drawback. Keep a dictionary handy for words like "embrocate" as you enter the prose of the nineteenth century.