Three Incestuous Sisters - Hardcover

Niffenegger, Audrey

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0224076868 ISBN 13: 9780224076869

Publisher: Jonathan Cape, 2005

Synopsis

Before she wrote The Time Traveler's Wife, now a bestseller all around the world, Audrey Niffenegger's books were beautiful, handmade, exquisitely illustrated tales, published in editions as small as ten copies. They took many years to create, were bought by collectors and have been seen by few people. At last, as part of its acclaimed and very successful list of graphic books, Cape is delighted to publish The Three Incestuous Sisters in a beautiful edition at an affordable price. It is the story of three sisters, Clothilde, Ophile and Bettine, who live together in a lonely house by the sea. All three are rivals for the love of Paris, the lighthouse-keeper's son. When Paris chooses Bettine, and she becomes pregnant, the other sisters are jealous. Eventually, after the baby is born, they cause Bettine's death. Paris runs away to sea and Ophile, overwhelmed by remorse, throws herself from the lighthouse. Clothilde lives on in the house, sad and alone. Then one day a circus comes to town. In it is an amazing flying boy. She recognizes him as Bettine's child...

About this title

About the Author:

Audrey Niffenegger is a visual artist and writer who lives mostly in Chicago and occasionally in London. She has published six books, including the novels The Time Traveler's Wife and Her Fearful Symmetry. She helped to found the Columbia College Chicago Center for Book and Paper Arts. Her art has been exhibited by Printworks Gallery in Chicago since 1986. She is a Professor in the Fiction Department of Columbia College. Her recent projects include a ballet, Raven Girl, in collaboration with Wayne McGregor for the Royal Opera House Ballet.

From Booklist:

*Starred Review* Niffenegger, author of the best-selling novel The Time Traveler's Wife (2003), is an accomplished artist as well as an imaginative writer, and she now presents a shivery fairy tale in the form of an eerily beautiful novel-in-pictures. The minimal yet spooky text faces dramatically nuanced full-page prints portraying three grown, orphaned sisters. Bettina, the youngest, is a lovely blond; Ophile, the unhappy eldest, has blue hair; Clothilde, in the middle and in a world of her own, is a redhead. The svelte sisters possess extravagantly long hair and tapering, expressive hands; wear clinging, gray, ankle-length dresses; and are as powerfully evocative as dancers in a Martha Graham production. They live harmoniously in "a lonely house by the sea" until the late lighthouse keeper's handsome son, Paris, appears and falls in love with Bettina, who soon becomes pregnant. Clothilde, whose esoteric talents include levitation, communes happily with her in utero nephew, while Ophile goes mad with jealousy. Niffenegger's grim yet erotic tale and stunningly moody gothic prints possess the sly subversion of Edward Gorey, the emotional valence of Edvard Munch, and her very own brilliant use of iconographic pattern, surprising perspective, and tensile line in the service of a delectable, otherworldly sensibility. Donna Seaman
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About this edition

• Publisher: Jonathan Cape
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0224076868
• ISBN 13: 9780224076869
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 176