A RUSSIAN SISTER

In this witty and colorfully-peopled novel, Caroline Adderson effortlessly plunges the reader into a nineteenth century Russian tragi-comedy.

Aspiring painter Masha C. is blindly devoted to Antosha, her famous writer-brother. Through the years Antosha takes up with numerous women from Masha's circle of friends, yet none of these relationships threaten the siblings' close ties until the winter he falls into a depression. Then Masha invites into their Moscow home a young woman who teaches with her – the beautiful, vivacious, and deeply vulnerable Lika Mizanova – with the express hope she might help Antosha recover.

The appearance of Lika sets off a convolution of unrequited love, jealousy, and scandal that lasts for seven years. If the famously unattainable writer has lost his heart to Lika as everyone claims, why does he undertake a life-threatening voyage to Sakhalin Island? And what will happen to Masha if she is demoted from “woman of the house” to “spinster sister”? While Antosha and Lika push and pull, Masha falls in love herself – with a man and with a mongoose – only to have her dreams twice crushed. From her own heartbreak she comes to recognize the harm that she has done to her friends by encouraging their involvement with Antosha. Too late for Lika. She prepares both to sacrifice herself for love and to be immortalized as the model for Nina in Chekhov's The Seagull.

A Russian Sister offers a clever commentary on the role of women as prey for male needs and male inspiration, a role they continue to play in our century. At the same time the novel is a plea for sisterhood, both familial and friendly. Chekhov's The Seagull changed the theater. A Russian Sister gives the reader a glimpse behind the curtain to the fascinating real-life people who inspired it and the tragedy that followed its premiere.

CAROLINE ADDERSON is the author of four novels (A History of Forgetting, Sitting Practice, The Sky Is Falling, and Ellen in Pieces), two collections of short stories (Bad Imaginings, Pleased To Meet You) as well as many books for young readers. Published in eleven countries, her work has received numerous award nominations including the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, two Commonwealth Writers' Prizes, the Governor General's Literary Award, the Rogers' Trust Fiction Prize, and the Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist. Winner of three B.C. Book Prizes and three CBC Literary Awards, Adderson was also the recipient of the Marian Engel Award for mid-career achievement. She is Program Director for the Writing Studio at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.