Is a sister born not made? what is the essence of the sisterly bond? what relationship does that bond have to the myth of sisterhood constructed around it? a myth leading to all those symbolic sisterhoods, of nurses, nuns, feminists and so forth, a section on whom concludes the book. And, throughout, we are asked to reflect on the nature of sisterhood itself. We are guided by Richard Dawkins through the genetics of ant colonies. We observe the sisterly bonds of bees, lions, elephants, gorillas and chimpanzees. And many not so well known sisters, both fictional and non fictional, besides. Then there are the well known fictional sisters: the March sisters Dorothea and Celia Brooke the Schlegel sisters Ursula and Gudrun from ‘Women in love’. Alongside them the theatrical and musical ones: Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland Maria Calls and her sister Jacqueline du Pre and hers Mozart and his sister. Famous literary sisters appear: the Brontes Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell the Mitfords Mary Lamb and brother Charles Vera Brittain. With the help of writers in many fields and over many centuries, she guides us through the peaks and troughs of sisterly life, both between sisters and between sisters and brothers from childhood, separation, love, marriage and parenthood, to old age an death itself. As one of three sisters herself, Penelope Farmer sets her exploration of sisterhood in an autobiographical framework, describing lowing and not so loving sisters in the past and present generations on all sides of her family.

Thus Christina Rossetti idealizes a complex and varied relationship, described and reflected on by countless poets, playwrights, journalists, social scientists and by sisters themselves over the years. If she doesn’t figure out some way to get back to the world she knows before the end of the term, she might never have another chance. Her teachers think she’s slow, the other girls find her odd, and, as she spends more and more time in 1918, Charlotte starts to wonder if she remembers how to be Charlotte at all. And instead of having only one new set of rules to learn, she also has to contend with the unprecedented strangeness of being an entirely new person in an era she knows nothing about. In the months to follow, Charlotte wakes alternately in her own time and in Clare’s. It’s natural to feel a little out of place when you’re the new girl, but when Charlotte Makepeace wakes up after her first night at boarding school, she’s baffled: everyone thinks she’s a girl called Clare Mobley, and even more shockingly, it seems she has traveled forty years back in time to 1918.

A time travel story that is both a poignant exploration of human identity and an absorbing tale of suspense.

Penelope farmer