The Dark Sister

Goldstein (The Mind-Body Problem; The Late-Summer Passion of a Woman of Mind) has cleverly constructed a highly imaginative tale that commands close analysis. Hedda, a grotesque, tormented author of angry feminist novels, has exiled herself to a gloomy New England house, where her grim solitude is interrupted only by phone calls from her silly but dangerous sister, Stella. Hedda is writing a Victorian novel, Henry Jamesian style, about Henry's brother William, the 19th century psychologist. In the work, William is sent to study two sisters - one a brilliant recluse, the other possibly murderous - with pasts as murky as Hedda's. Characters are mirrored, parallel plots overlap and several dark sisters - gifted with imaginative intellects but viewed as morbidly deviant - are doomed to destruction. Although this book may at times seem an unstructured melange of repeated themes, images and phrases inspired by 19th-century literature, psychology, metaphysics and feminist history, its disjointedness is purposeful and provocative. Readers who persevere will be rewarded by this witty, literary tour de force.