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Gina Frangello

My Sister's Continent Paperback – January 1, 2006

by Gina Frangello (Author)

3.0 16 ratings

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Fiction. MY SISTER'S CONTINENT is a contemporary retelling of Freud's infamous "Dora" case study, following a loosely parallel plot and containing similarly controversial sexual themes and layers of possibilities. Kirby is a young woman attempting to come to terms with a "failed" bout of therapy while concurrently trying to decipher the truth about her identical twin, Kendra's, life. When she is sent a skewed case study of herself by her former psychiatrist, she decides torespond by using Kendra's journals to reconstruct her final months with her sister and her brief time in therapy, finally creating her own version of the truth.

Print length

316 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Chiasmus Press
Publication date

January 1, 2006
Dimensions

5.5 x 0.75 x 8.25 inches
ISBN-10

0970321295
ISBN-13

978-0970321299
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Gina Frangello
59
Hardcover
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Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Soon to be married, Kirby dreads the return to Chicago of her twin, Kendra, a ballerina. So severe is Kirby's stress-induced intestinal malady, her father sends her to his shrink. Kendra is even more of a wreck: a back injury has ended her dancing life, leaving this anorexic, pill-popping sexual outlaw perilously at loose ends. But their father trumps all: he has AIDS. Under all this duress, Kirby begins to question her engagement and her sexuality, and Kendra, a devotee of pain, takes up with a colleague of her father's who is proficient in sadomasochism. The adventurous editor of the literary magazine Other Voices, Frangello has parlayed Freud's vision of female sexuality as a "dark continent" into a boldly explicit debut novel in which high-strung characters struggle to decode the mysteries of the self while their bodies express what their minds repress. Fran-gello is uncanny and mesmerizing in this smart, suspenseful psychosexual drama as she choreographs traumatic, possibly criminal, family dynamics, and delves fearlessly into questions of identity, abuse, power, trust, trespass, and delusion. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

A Freudian tale of a family's twisted past . . . weaving complex issues of sexuality, AIDS and eating disorders. -- Chicago Magazine, December 2005, Jennifer Tanaka

A refreshing rebuttal to the canard that feminism is humorless, and the deep pun in the title is priceless. -- Chicago Tribune, December 2005, Bill Savage

Frangello is uncanny and mesmerizing in this smart, suspenseful psychosexual drama as she choreographs traumatic and even criminal family dynamics. -- Booklist, January 2006, Donna Seaman

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Chiasmus Press (January 1, 2006)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 316 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0970321295
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0970321299
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.75 x 8.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #4,556,888 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,669,760 in Literature & Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
3.0 16 ratings

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Gina Frangello

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Gina Frangello is the author of the short story collection Slut Lullabies (Emergency Press 2010) and the novel My Sister's Continent (Chiasmus 2006), and her second novel, London Calling, will be released in 2011. Gina is a long-time editor and advocate in the independent publishing community. For ten years she served as the Editor of the award-winning literary magazine, Other Voices, and in 2005 she co-founded its book imprint, Other Voices Books, where she is now the Executive Editor. Other Voices Books (www.ovbooks.com) specializes in short story collections, themed anthologies and novels set outside the United States. Gina also edits the Fiction Section of the popular online literary collective, The Nervous Breakdown (www.thenervousbreakdown.com) and has guest-edited several outside projects, including the anthology Falling Backwards: Stories of Fathers and Daughters (Hourglass 2004) and the inaugural issue of TriQuarterly Online. Her journalism and book reviews have appeared widely in newspapers and blogs such as the Chicago Tribune and The Huffington Post. She can be found online at www.ginafrangello.com and currently resides in Chicago with her husband, twin daughters and son.

Author's note: "I love to do book clubs and blog tours, and have based my writing and editing career around forging personal connections between writers and readers. I'm on Facebook and Twitter, and if you'd like to read more of my nonfiction work, I can be found on The Nervous Breakdown blogging, and respond to all comments left on my stories there!"

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Robin H

Three Stars

Reviewed in the United States on November 16, 2014

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I loved this book until the final chapter. Too many unanwered questions.

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Yolanda S. Bean

I wanted to like it...

Reviewed in the United States on June 11, 2008

Believe me, when I picked up this book, I wanted to like it. I thought I surely would! I mean, it's set here in Chicago and revolves around the lives of identical twins (also quite applicable to me!). And while it was an engrossing story, it left me feeling unsatisfied and that the whole book was rather inconclusive.
Also, and I am not quite sure why, the book oozed self-publication, and despite the author claiming to live in Chicago, it seemed as though some of the details were pretty off. I also didn't see the point in the focus being almost entirely sexual... it is hard to maintain, and Frangello definitely did not keep my interest. I also felt like all the characters were unattractive and unlikeable. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone other than my own sister, and even then just to see what she thinks of it.
Maybe someday I will re-visit this book and see if my opinion has shifted, but I think it will be on the shelf a long while before that happens.

3 people found this helpful

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mfaromantic

Not sure...

Reviewed in the United States on March 21, 2007

I'm about 100 pages in and I can't decide whether to keep reading or not. I was really expecting to be totally enthralled with this book as a result of the description and the reviews but so far, I can't get connected to the story or the characters. I find the concept of the book fascinating but ultimately, I don't find the characters engaging and in some ways it all seems superficial or contrived to me. At the same time, I keep believing that if I stick it out a little longer, I will find it more compelling and that I might miss out on a good book if I give up. My philosophy has always been that I would rather walk away from a book I'm not enjoying or gaining anything from in favor of others that I would find more satisfying. With this one, I'm very torn. I think I may ultimately move on to something else. That being said, if the description interests you, I would recommend giving it a chance; maybe it will speak to you more than it has to me.

One person found this helpful

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Neon Wilder

Excellent, highly charged story

Reviewed in the United States on November 5, 2006

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This is one of the few books in recent memory that has continued to linger in my mind. It's on my Reread Soon list. Frangello's characters are all rendered warmly, with depth, and sympathy, no matter how cold, scheming, or hypocritical they might be. I found myself caring for each and every one of them, warts and all. The story of one twin's attempt to understand and tell her sister's life plunges us into a zig-zagging attempt at revealing truth. As each facet her sister's and family's life is revealed (drink, drugs, AIDS, S&M, recovered memories, and lies, lies, lies), you gain a broader, deeper picture, but one that is ultimately as murky as real life often is. Despite what some might consider sensationalistic subject matter, it is not presented as titillation. One of the best books I've read in recent years.

2 people found this helpful

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Nicole Tsamoulos

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on March 5, 2016

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Love this book! As a twin this was amazingly haunting.

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Simon N. Smithson

A gripping and unforgettable psychodrama

Reviewed in the United States on July 9, 2011

Frangello's text leaps off the page in My Sister's Continent, a contemporary take on Freud's infamous Dora case study. The text explores the relationship between twin sisters who reconnect after a gulf expressed in time, distance, and emotion, and the slow and insidious bubbling to the surface of their innermost secrets and flaws as their family unit dissolves in the face of scandal and disease.

Frangello's writing is extraordinarily strong and vivid; she perfectly captures the Chicago backdrop and the intricacy of familial relationships in a way that feels as real as solid wood. Her characterisation is considered and completely truthful - she has constructed a world where you find yourself nodding in recognition at the ways in which people relate to each other, in kindness and in cruelty.

It's perhaps not a book for the faint-hearted; a lot of the material Frangello works with here is gritty in its sexuality and humanity, but the book is ultimately hugely rewarding, and calls up many questions about relating to sex, relating to others, relating to truth and relating to self.

2 people found this helpful

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Roger W. Wright

Pay Attention World! A Compelling Piece of Literature!!!!

Reviewed in the United States on January 21, 2006

Not only will this keep you reading till all hours of the night.

You won't be able to sleep when you're done.

At it's heart: it's a riveting story. Behind the curtain of this story, there is a towering intelligence pulling the cranks, blowing whistles, and letting out the steam of everything from Freud, to grunge bars to feminist theory to the souless chasm of the suburbs. But the intelligence never gets in the way of the story.

Twin sisters navigating the Clinton years and family wars perhaps as old as time. Set with complete and total realism in Chicago and the Northern Suburbs of the city. Language that holds nothing back.

This book will probobly never make it on to Oprah. (If it did, prepare for a seismic shift in the elevation of true literature in our society) It does not have the pat, feel good cliches of an author telling us how to think and feel warm and cozy. Nothing here that feels like fresh baked cookies. This book is somebody else's expensive scotch guzzled too fast at 2:00 am with a momentary ally in the creepy dark sleet of winter night.

This is an author holding up a mirror to these riveting characters and letting the reader SEE the reflections. The effect is that, just like great music, a lot of the power is what is NOT said, the pauses, the missing pieces as we catch a reflection---not totally sure what we saw--but compelled by the power of the story to keep reading. Keep reading.

You won't forget this story.

7 people found this helpful

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