Once We Were Sisters, Sheila Kohler
Once We Were Sisters, Sheila Kohler
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Once We Were Sisters
A Memoir

Author: Sheila Kohler

Narrator: Sheila Kohler

Unabridged: 4 hr 52 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/17/2017

Synopsis

A beautiful, heartrending literary memoir about the tragic death of the author’s beloved older sister and a tribute to their bond.When Sheila Kohler was thirty-seven, she received the heart-stopping news that her sister Maxine, only two years older, was killed when her husband drove them off a deserted road in Johannesburg. Stunned by the news, she immediately flew back to the country where she was born, determined to find answers and forced to reckon with his history of violence and the lingering effects of their most unusual childhood—one marked by death and the misguided love of their mother.In her signature spare and incisive prose, Sheila Kohler recounts the lives she and her sister led. Flashing back to their story-book childhood at the family estate, Crossways, Kohler tells of the death of her father when she and Maxine were girls, which led to the family abandoning their house and the girls being raised by their mother, at turns distant and suffocating. We follow them to the cloistered Anglican boarding school where they first learn of separation and later their studies in Rome and Paris where they plan grand lives for themselves—lives that are interrupted when both marry young and discover they have made poor choices. Kohler evokes the bond between sisters and shows how that bond changes but never breaks, even after death.

About Sheila Kohler

Sheila Kohler is the author of five novels, including Cracks, Crossways, The Perfect Place, and Children of Pithiviers. Cracks was chosen by New York Newsday and Library Journal as one of the best books of 1999. Kohler has also published three collections of short stories. A native of South Africa, she makes her home in New York City, and teaches at Bennington College in Vermont.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Jennifer on April 07, 2017

Once We Were Sisters is a memoir/biography written by Sheila Kohler about her relationship with her sister as well as her sister's tragic death via car accident/alleged murder. Ms. Kohler discusses the culture, social norms, and gender/race dynamics in her home country of South Africa. While these e......more

Goodreads review by Lark on January 30, 2019

It began very promisingly. I could feel how much author Sheila Kohler loved her sister. Kohler did a wonderful job right up front, too, setting out the strangeness of her childhood as the backdrop for her memoir. Soon the story derailed. The memoir lacks, to me, a coherent thematic point of view--an......more

Goodreads review by Danielle on October 15, 2024

A life of privilege and loss. 🙃......more

Goodreads review by Kasa on October 30, 2016

This is a hauntingly personal memoir written by a successful novelist who has mined this material over the course in her career. Sheila Kohler and her sister, Maxine, had an extraordinarily privileged childhood growing up in South Africa. Losing their father at an early age, they found their way the......more

Quotes

“Beautiful and disturbing….Highly recommended.” Joyce Carol Oates, National Book Award–winning author

“Rich and poignant.” J. M. Coetzee, Nobel Prize–winning author

“An exquisite and devastating book.” Tracy K. Smith, Pulitzer Prize–winning author

“An intimate illumination of sisterhood and loss.” People

“A searing and intimate memoir about love turned deadly…Kohler digs into her past for a searing and intimate memoir about love turned deadly…Her powerful story gives a sharp contrast between a sister’s lasting love and the ways society protects a violent man.” BBC

“A memoir of love, sorrow, sisterhood, and privilege. It’s also a memoir of the limitations of such privilege — in particular, the inescapable tragedy of being born female in a patriarchal world.” New York Times Book Review

“Intimate, exquisitely written…In spare, delicate prose, Kohler brings a seasoned novelist’s skills to this deeply moving, compelling memoir.” Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Short enough to read in one sitting but poignant enough to linger in the mind long afterward…Kohler’s spare and lyrical narrative explores the bonds of sisterhood and what might have been done to avert this family tragedy.” BookPage

“A tragic yet gorgeous story that will appeal to those interested in the nature of memory, South African history, and fraught family relationships.” Booklist

“Brilliantly intelligent, beautifully written, sensually detailed, sexy, exquisitely restrained and shocking.” Phillip Lopate, author of Being with Children

Awards

  • People Magazine Best New Books
  • BookPage Top Pick
  • BBC Best Book
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