Customer Reviews

The Prettier Sister

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THE PRETTIER SISTER is a book that unlocks the truth of every woman's life. Frnacine Kaplan's wonderful prose captures the imagination and makes every page come to life. It is fiction that reads like a personal story. Did this really happen? I can relate to this. Those are the questions that keeps popping up in the reader's mind. What's next? It's a book that's impossible to put down until reaching the last page--with a deep sigh, wanting more.

Fritzie von Jessen, author
I Killed a Penguin: An Ecological MemoirTough Plants in a Fragile Land: Saving Our Planet, One Garden

In "The Prettier Sister," Francine Kaplan has created a spell-binding yarn of Americana at its most intense. In the beginning, protagonist Barbara is ignored while her younger sister, Regina, is being pushed by their mother to become a Hollywood star and model. You'll laugh, you'll cry, sometimes you'll hate and sometimes love the family depicted in this story, warts and all. Protagonist Barbara and her lovely sister Reggie begin with traditional sibling rivaly slathered with alternating layers of love and hate. Wonderfully well written -- author Kaplan brings a chuckle to many a sentence, a tear drop, and often a belly laugh in this marvelous novel where the thesis is the tragedy of being the overlooked child. Just a few of the hundreds of shining examples in this stellar prose are: "his hairpiece stuck on his head like it had blown in and landed there;" "he stood bowed like a wilted flower over suitcases and cartons;" and "collecting boy friends, like her stamp collection, looking for the special one to paste into her life and make her rich.

"The Prettier Sister" is not an easy book, its life-lessons are tough: child abuse, addiction, rape, bedwetting, paternal abuse, and unthinking cruelty. Many's the time you'll say, "I don't want to know about this stuff," but you'll read on just as surely as you can't help gawking at the remains of a roadside accident. While the plot is riveting, Kaplan's rich use of language never fails to enchant. Francine Kaplan also has a knack for quick, wise and often profound observations about people, about life, about herself, all of which make this complex plot more engaging and real.

The most difficult part of the story for this reviewer was Barbara's continuing push-pull relationship with her father who presses sexual inferences and touch upon her, causing her to fear moments of intimacy and to yearn for a loving relationship with him without sexual ovetones. Here, Francine Kaplan is especially artful in presenting this fathers sexual machinations directly, but sensitively.

Finally, what you'll love about "The Prettier Sister" is the glory of author Kaplan's sentence construction and creative phrases that call you back, cause you to stop and reflect on a single phrase, e.g., [from her mother] "Please make sure my casket is closed. How I look dead is my business."

"The Prettier Sister" is better than a good book, it's a great book, one you won't forget for a long, long time. It's one of those books you won't be able to resist telling your friends about.