The Three Incestuous Sisters [Paperback]

Audrey Niffenegger (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Harry N Abrams Inc (2005)
• ASIN: B000OP39C2
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Audrey Niffenegger is a visual artist and a faculty member at Columbia College in Chicago. In addition to her bestselling debut novel, The Time Traveler's Wife, she is the author of two illustrated novels, The Three Incestuous Sisters and The Adventuress. She lives in Chicago.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

71 of 76 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars lovely and hypnotic, September 24, 2005

By 

A. C. Walter "awalter" (Lynnwood, WA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Three Incestuous Sisters: An Illustrated Novel (Hardcover)

Here it is--Audrey Niffenegger's strange follow-up to her wildly popular novel "The Time Traveler's Wife." The new book is a "visual novel" of 176 pages and can be read in well under an hour--though, hopefully, you'll spend days pouring over the gorgeous pictures. Open up the book and you find that for every picture on a right-hand page there is a brief narrative caption on the left-hand page. I can best describe the artwork as being a lot like Edward Gorey (actually, the whole aesthetic of the book is Gorey-esque), a bit like Gustav Klimt (imagine Gorey getting it into his head to do Klimt figures), and not a small bit like the art of Dominic Kulcsar on his website The Wmmvrrvrrmm Place--really, up till now Dominic is the only person I know of who made good use of floating fetuses.

And the book isn't as creepy as it sounds. The "incest" business comes in this way. . . The story concerns three lonely sisters. The youngest sister falls in love with a strange man, and the oldest sister becomes wickedly jealous, thinking that she too loves the young man. When the youngest sister becomes pregnant, the middle sister begins a mystical relationship with the fetus, becoming her unborn nephew's spiritual mentor. That's about as weird as it gets--but I suppose that's weird enough!

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars As the title would surely indicate, a intriguing picture book for adults, May 5, 2006

By 

Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Three Incestuous Sisters: An Illustrated Novel (Hardcover)

Actually what I noticed first was the dimensions of this book, which is basically 9 1/2 x 12 1/2 inches, so that it jutted out from the shelf and demanded attention. Then I noticed that the title was "The Three Incenstuous Sisters," which will certainly get your attention and that this was "A Novel in Pictures by the Best-Selling Author of 'The Time Traveler's Wife.'" What this means to indicate is not a comic book or graphic novel, but rather that each two-page spread offers a full-page illustration on the right side and a simple caption or few words of text on the left.

The drawings are hand-color etchings with aquatint, and they are the most compelling part of the proceedings. There are one hundred plates, including the first, the frontispiece that doubles as the book's cover, and the final double-page illustration, the only one included. I want to say that they strike me as combing Gerhard's attention to background detail with the coloring sensibilities of Toulouse Lautrec. I know that is but an impression and hardly indicative of any sort of competent artistic evaluation, but it might be enough to pique your curiosity. What you make of the story that is told with this pictures will end up being the greater debate.

The three sisters are Bettine, Ophile, and Clothilde, who "lived together in a lonely house by the sea, near the lighthouse, miles away from the city." Bettine, with her blond hair, is the youngest and the prettiest. Ophile is the eldest and the smartest, and has blue hair. Clothilde, the middle sister, is the most talented and has red hair. The story, which begins with a gathering storm, is divided into three part, each focusing on one sister. When the Lighthouse Keeper is killed by lightning, his son, Paris, is called and arrives on the scene. All three of the sisters experience sure signs of bad luck, so that when a few days later Clothilde practices levitation at breakfast and then Paris makes his coice and begins courting Bettine, we know this is not going to go well.

I cannot explain the way in which the relationship between the three sisters constitutes something that is incestuous, because the title appears to be provocative rather than descriptive. The net effect of reading the book is to be intrigued as to what it is all about. Granted, you can flip through the book, "read" all of captions and check out all of the illustrations in 5-10 minutes easily. Trying to figure out what it is all about will take you longer, and I am by no means convinced that there is a specific meaning to be unlocked. Ultimately, it will be Niffenegger's artwork that captivates you rather than the narrative.

36 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Enigmatic, with remarkable illustrations, August 30, 2005

By 

wiredweird "wiredweird" (Earth, or somewhere nearby) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Three Incestuous Sisters: An Illustrated Novel (Hardcover)

The illustraton is the real strength of this book, for my taste. They are aquatints by the author, an etchinq process originally meant to imitate watercolor, colored au poupee (on the printing plate). Although Goya used it extensively and successfully, it's not common these days. As an achievement in control of the process, this is a worthwhile display of what can be done with the technique. Some plates, such as 'Haunted,' demonstrate how burnishers can be used, somewhat in the mezzotint manner. I found the drawings plain, not always the best renderings of people. The set of prints, as a whole, is still a delight, though.

The book itself is a labor of love - in the best sense, but in others as well. The author started it long before her very successful "Time Traveler's Wife," and I suspect that TTW's success had a lot to do with bringing this to life. That success may have given the author enough clout to publish a story that might not have seen the light of day otherwise, one that has meaning for her if not for others. It's like an Edward Gorey book, with one picture per two-page spread, and a sentence or two - or less - on the opposite page. There's little of Gorey's mystery, though, and none of his macabre atmosphere. Much is left implied by the epigrammatic writing, and probably a lot more than I was able to deduce. Parts of it seem to have eluded me.

Still, it's interesting enough, the pictures generally work well, and word and image add up to more than just their sum.

//wiredweird