KDL Recommends > Staff Picks > December 2012

KDL Recommends

My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece

My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece

ISBN: 0316176907

Title: My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece

Author: Annabel Pitcher

KDL Description:

I just finished My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece by Annabel Pitcher and it basically broke my soul and made me weep copious amounts of tears and I thought I would never recover. But in a good way! The book’s about a family dealing with the aftermath of the 7/7 London bombings, five years after the fact. Our 10-year-old narrator Jamie’s sister was killed, and no one could decide what their feelings were doing, so his Mom runs away with someone from her support group, and his Dad becomes a raging hyper-racist alcoholic, and his other sister Jas (the twin of the deceased Rose) dyes her hair and acquires some piercings and gets down to trying to raise her little brother, given that her parents completely fail at it, even though she’s only fifteen and still coping with her own grief issues. It’s basically amazing but it’s also going to make you want to curl up in a ball and rock back and forth. Highly recommend!
-Monica at KDL’s Wyoming branch

Amazon Description:

My sister Rose lives on the mantelpiece.

Well, some of her does.
A collarbone, two ribs, a bit of skull, and a little toe.

To ten-year-old Jamie, his family has fallen apart because of the loss of someone he barely remembers: his sister Rose, who died five years ago in a terrorist bombing. To his father, life is impossible to make sense of when he lives in a world that could so cruelly take away a ten-year-old girl. To Rose’s surviving fifteen year old twin, Jas, everyday she lives in Rose’s ever present shadow, forever feeling the loss like a limb, but unable to be seen for herself alone.

Told with warmth and humor, this powerful novel is a sophisticated take on one family’s struggle to make sense of the loss that’s torn them apart… and their discovery of what it means to stay together.