Betsy Lerner (2024) Shred Sisters.

Betsy Lerner (2024) Shred Sisters.

I read Shred Sisters in about four hours. It follows  the rules of novel writing. Betsy Lerner as a writer, editor and agent—she edited and promoted one of my favourite books Autobiography of a Face—knows too well the holes authors fall into. That doesn’t mean she won’t fall into them, because that’s not the way it works. Most of use can’t really see what we write. She knows that too having published a book about the publishing industry. All of made good sense without actually helping much, which like therapy, features in the book. Then there’s the book she wrote about reconciling herself with the bridge-playing, Jewish mother and her circle of friends (Bridge Ladies). Bits of that are in Shred Sisters too.

It begins with broken glass. Not quite Kristlenacht, but closer.  Dad is in the den. I wouldn’t use words like chilling. Mum is away on a cruise around the fjords while playing endless games of bridge. Ollie has crashed through a window. Bleeding and covered in glass. She can’t move. Disaster is a constant. Being beautiful and naturally athletic both as a child, adolescent helps bend the world around her. She gets off with a few scratches as she does because that’s who she is.

Ollie has no brakes.  Amy idolises her sister. Everybody does. But she’s younger, impressionable, and studious. Not popular.  She is everything her sister is not.

Second sister. Second prize. The one left behind when Ollie takes off.

When Ollie is forced into treatment her outrage is against a system that treats her as having a mental-health disorder. As being broken, like her family. She refuses to play their game. She makes her own rules. Fuck them. She’s good at fucking too.

Mum and dad are split. Amy trying to fit into her family, school and life that doesn’t work.

Ollie prises them apart, yet keeps them together.  

Amy is primed for failure yet to succeed she must become someone she’s not yet. Ollie freewheeling. Outside their orbit and an ongoing tragedy like a black hole. Read on.