Customer Reviews

The Sister: A Novel of Emily Dickinson

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Sometimes I imagine the life of Emily. Her home, her family.
With this book, I can live that world, I can see Emily, Vinnie, Austin, Sue... For me, this is so special because Emily is my favorite writer.
Now, I am reading the book in Spanish.
Paola Kaufmann was a great writer. I am enjoying her book.

Lavinia's actual voice comes to us in a very few fragments, but the attentive reader of Emily's poems has many questions for the almost-mute sister to genius. What of the awesome moment in that Amherst bedroom when she discovered the extent of her siters writings, for example; how thrilling to have this premier event of American literature imaginatively explored. Kaufmann's boldness in choosing to write of Dickinson's sister is admirable, of course, and any attempt to enter into the life of the Dickinson Homestead presents alluring possiblities. Unfortuantely Kaufmann's attempt rings false from start to finish. There are some glaring anachronsims, such as Emily's mother serving a "casserole" in the 1850's, which lends a Brady Bunch touch to an otherwise dramatically rich moment early on in the narrative. Another such moment occurs when Emily asks her apparently more experienced siste whether "intercourse...hurts?" Emily's sexuality is of course the subject of intense academic speculation, but the baldness of this awkwardly rendered scene reads like something out of a Judy Bloom novel. If somehow the author had managed to answer the reader's ultimate question for Lavinia:"What was Emily like?" Kaufmann's attempt, though bold, leaves us with grotesque caricatures of the poet and her sister. As is so often the case with Dickinson, she leaves us behind baffled,her monumental poetry her sole and fitting life commentary.