The True and Splendid History of the Harristown Sisters
By Michelle Lovric
480 pages;
Bloomsbury USA
How do seven
impoverished, fatherless sisters from rural Ireland with only middling artistic
talents rise to notoriety? Darcy, the leader of the tribe, bullies her sisters
into taking to the dance
halls of their famine-stricken hometown, with hopes of striking it big. At the
end of each show, the girls turn their backs to the audience and let down their
hair, which cascades, unfettered, to their ankles. They soon become a hit act.
"Our hair had its roots inside us, but it was outside as well," says
Manticory, the lone redheaded sister and our narrator. "In that slippage
between our inner and outer selves—there lurked our seven
scintillating destinies and all our troubles besides." The novel is
loosely based on a true-life group of American sisters who leveraged their hair
to fame and fortune, and is cleverly set during a period when the
Pre-Raphaelite style signified romance and freedom. Each of the seven
sisters—insult-spitting Darcy, sweet Edna, tender Oona, wicked
Berenice, plain Pertilly, spirited Ida, keen-eyed Manticory—will
experience heartbreak and violence, even as their stars rise. Read this for the
story, which is wildly compelling, and also for the prose, as magnetic as the
sisters themselves.
— Julie Buntin