I See You Everywhereby Julia Glass, Hutchinson, £18.99.
LOUISA Jardine and her sister Clem are polar opposites: one an intellectual art magazine editor in New York and the other a free-spirited biologist, travelling to remote areas of the world to study wildlife. We first meet them in 1980 when Clem is just 18.
Their first-person narratives weave around each other throughout the book, describing the girls’ separate lives and the times they collide – usually through a relative’s death or some personal trauma. There’s the usual sibling jealousy over parental love and who will inherit their aunt’s treasured possessions. But they also care for each other, though they rarely express it and have painfully enigmatic conversations.
It’s a difficult book to read. Just when you think you are getting to know one of the sisters at a certain time in their life, you’re transported to another time and a different sister’s perspective. The sections seem arbitrary and incongruous and after the ultimate tragedy, there’s no real sense of conclusion. Perhaps you never really knew either sister at all and maybe you don’t care.
