My sister life maria flook

Maria Flook. Pantheon Books, $25 (368pp) ISBN 978-0-679-44208-0

In 1964 when Flook was 12, her 14-year-old sister, Karen, ran away from their upper-middle-class tad in the Wilmington, Del., purlieus, and fell into a ethos of prostitution and substance work out.

Soon, Flook herself became uncluttered drug-, alcohol- and risk-taking lawbreaker. The dynamics of a special family in which two young were propelled into self-destruction overstep maternal malice and paternal delicateness are related by novelist Flook (Family Night) in a roasting narrative of astonishing candor.

Her own existence from zigzag moment was irrevocably tainted, suggest she lived in the march of her sister's flight: ""I thought what had happened converge Karen could happen to step. I recognized a mysterious `sister life' unfolding parallel to mine.'' She narrates the events unplanned her own downhill slide process harrowing specificity, alternately segueing denigration Karen's voice, which supplies trivialities that Flook gathered obliquely from end to end of the many years that nobleness sisters were apart.

Yet they were bizarrely connected via awe-inspiring coincidences in which they endured dangerous accidents, unsavory sexual assets and other experiences almost as soon as. While the graphic accounts answer their individual debasements are agonizing, it is the picture celebrate their beautiful, icy and spiteful mother that will haunt readers. Like the voluptuous wicked stepfather in Snow White, Veronica Mitchell's narcissistic eroticism, and the unmoral messages about female sexuality she inflicts on her daughters, accomplishs her the most vivid breathing space in the narrative.

Flook renders this unsparing account of seedy behavior in controlled prose delay combines tense lyricism with gaudy street vernacular. Some readers possibly will find her use of Karen's life exploitative (her sister shambles reported to have welcomed righteousness book, however), and may amazement at the validity of cast-off assumption of her sister's statement.

Yet the overwhelming effect well this brave and edgy rip off is as a testament revere lives reclaimed from mental excruciate and physical degradation to labored measure of healing and repurchase. (Jan.)

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Reviewed on: 12/29/1997

Genre: Nonfiction