Invisible Sisters: A Memoir

by Jessica Handler

Book Overview

When Jessica Handler was eight years old, her younger sister Susie was diagnosed with leukemia. To any family, the diagnosis would have been upending, but to the Handlers, whose youngest daughter, Sarah, had been born with a rare, fatal blood disorder, it was an unimaginable verdict. Struck by the unlikelihood of siblings sick with diametrically opposed illnesses, the medical community labeled the Handlers' situation a bizarre coincidence. To their...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0820348929
• ISBN13: 9780820348926
• Release Date: September 2015
• Publisher: University of Georgia Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Juicy Memoir of Love and Loss

This is a truthful, telling story of Jessica Handler, who grew up as the only healthy child out of three sisters due to a genetic disorder. That disorder ends up killing both of her sisters. Now middle aged, Jessica takes us back to her life growing up in Atlanta in the 1960s and '70s. We see the inner lives of her family and what her friends didn't see when they looked at her handsome father, a popular lawyer, and her attractive mother. We see scenes from her parents' budding romance at college in Boston and their early lives as a happy family with three precocious daughters. Slowly, however, the fairytale crumbles and each family member tumbles down a cliff. Jessica paints the life of her sister Susie so clearly I feel as if I knew her personally and feel almost sure I was friends with her. Sadly, Susie dies at age six, inciting the destruction of the family and the lifelong depression of her father. We see the rough emotional times as Jessica traverses through childhood to adulthood. We glimpse at the first date she had in her late 30s with Mickey--now her husband--who worked with her at CNN. Over drinks he reveals to her he faked his death as a young adult and left the country after a girlfriend gave birth to his baby. Although her sisters and father are deceased, and she seems to have a great relationship with her mother and husband, I want to know more about Jessica's life now. I hope she writes a sequel.

Honest and moving

For someone who has dealt with far more tragic family circumstances than anyone should, the author provides a very deep but surprisingly positive perspective. Lesser people in the same situations would have caved in to depression, blame, and would have grown to be bitter and angry. Handler did not- her story is that of a girl who shoulders too much responsibility, a young adult who struggles for identity, and a woman who is a survivor. The author gives us a very honest and open view of her life and her family, and her strength (whether she realizes it or not) is nothing short of astonishing.

Incredible read!

I enjoyed Invisible Sisters. It was a touching story, and kept me riveted throughout.

Clear-eyed and Compelling...

Jessica Handler's "Invisible Sisters" is a clear-eyed, compelling story of the devastation a chance genetic flaw can visit on a brilliant, promising, loving family. The devastation of one rare blood disease followed by another. Cruel and unfathomable anomalies that ultimately ended both her younger sisters' lives and bludgeoned the survivors. Ms. Handler tells the story of the impact on her sisters, her parents and herself with brutal honesty and the engaging vision of a narrator who sees things as a child, an adolescent, a young woman and finally an adult Someone who is all along trying to find her natural self. Someone who experiences other,'normal' life struggles, like all of us, but someone who, we come to see, can not be like all of us."Invisible Sisters" is by turns joyful, sad, hopeful and tragic. Nonetheless, the book is uplifting, a true tribute to her sisters and her parents, each person stretched as far as he or she could go. Raphael Richman

Powerful memoir

If ever there was an excuse for an author to indulge in self pity and overwhelming depression, losing two of your siblings would be it. However, Jessica Handler avoids melodrama and cliché in her moving, but clear-eyed memoir that honors her sisters' memory and shows that she has the courage to live her own life on her own terms. Plus, the woman is a damn good writer. I was impressed by "Invisible Sisters" and rank it on the same level as "Liars Club" and "Autobiography of a Face."