In the end, this is 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, where all the money, beauty and breeding cannot protect you from a man who takes what he wants without consequence. Rich, pretty, good Maxine, forever the dutiful doll, died young, and her husband lived to a ripe old age, his atrocities never acknowledged. Until now.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“An intimate illumination of sisterhood and loss.”
—People Magazine (Best New Books)
“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.”
—The BBC (Ten Books to Read in 2017)
“It's fitting that the book is written in the present tense, because [Kohler’s] sister is forever with her. Their relationship changes shape yet lingers, as do the important questions about women and violence.”
—Oprah.com (5 Powerful New Memoirs)
“In this intimate, exquisitely written memoir, the author’s first work of nonfiction, she explores the impenetrable bond that can exist between sisters. . . . In spare, delicate prose, Kohler brings a seasoned novelist's skills to this deeply moving, compelling memoir.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Sheila Kohler has written a beautiful and disturbing memoir of a beloved sister who died at the age of thirty-nine in circumstances that strongly suggest murder. Like all of Sheila Kohler’s prose work, Once We Were Sisters reveals its story by degrees, amid a richly sensuous milieu of South African white privilege and repression. It is a tragic tale, with echoes of cultural sexism and misogyny, yet a triumphant story of a young woman’s liberation from this culture and her emergence as a writer. Highly recommended.”
—Joyce Carol Oates, National Book Award-winning author of Them
“Young Sheila Kohler abandons the time-warp of 1950s South Africa and heads for Europe on a voyage of self-discovery. Her quest to find out what it is that she desires—a quest that will last decades and is recounted with the seriousness it deserves, lightened with touches of dry comedy—ends in the discovery that she is and has always been a writer. The most striking parts of this rich and poignant memoir—rich above all in sensual experience—reflect on the necessary cruelty of the writer’s art, sacrificing the truth of the world to the truth of fiction.”
—J.M. Coetzee, author of Disgrace and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
“Throughout her literary career, Sheila Kohler has obsessively tried to find closure and justice for her sister’s untimely death and, finally, in this memoir she has succeeded in coming to terms with the tragedy by movingly recalling their childhood together and expressing her love for her sister.”
—Lily Tuck, National Book Award-winning author of The Double Life of Liliane
“For unto whom much is given, of him shall be much required: this Biblical verse takes on a tragic ring as this memoir of a privileged childhood ends in murder. Sheila Kohler has put together this heartfelt, suspenseful confession with a lifetime’s worth of skill and an abundance of inborn genius.”
—Edmund White, author of A Boy’s Own Story
“Sheila Kohler's writing is visually potent, viscerally compelling, and intensely personal. In Once We Were Sisters she conjures a lost world of privilege, violence, and repression that has chilling parallels in contemporary life.”
—Rebecca Miller, author of Personal Velocity
“This lean memoir cuts straight to the heart of what it is to love—and lose—a sister. Kohler sidesteps nothing; her private rage, regret, heartbreak, and revelation mingle unforgettably with the public shame of apartheid. Once We Were Sisters is an exquisite and devastating book.”
—Tracy K. Smith, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Ordinary Light
“To write a first-rate memoir is to encounter a mystery. In Sheila Kohler's brilliantly intelligent, beautifully written, sensually detailed, sexy, exquisitely restrained and shocking memoir, there are several mysteries: Why do we act the way we do? Why are we passive when we should be active, and vice versa? What does it take for a young woman to find out who she is? What griefs, what losses must attend that discovery? How to account for the cruelty and self-indulgence of men, or the willed blindness and guilt of women? 'What is it I have done or failed to do?' the memoirist keeps asking here, and her responses are unfailingly, stringently honest.”
—Phillip Lopate, author of Being With Children
★ 2016-10-06
Novelist Kohler (Dreaming for Freud, 2014, etc.) reflects on her beloved older sister, Maxine, who was tragically killed in a car accident at the age of 39.In this intimate, exquisitely written memoir, the author’s first work of nonfiction, she explores the impenetrable bond that can exist between sisters. As the daughters of a wealthy white timber merchant, Sheila and Maxine enjoyed all of the privileges of living on a vast estate outside of Johannesburg in the postwar years under apartheid. Yet upon their father’s untimely death, their seemingly idyllic lives were disrupted as their domineering and impulsive mother abandoned their home and moved with the girls to various new settings. In chapters alternately moving back and forth in time, Kohler recalls pivotal moments throughout their lives: their experiences living on the family estate, being shuttled off to an Anglican boarding school, and their glamorous travels to European cities together as young women, travels that unfortunately led to their early and regrettable decisions to marry. Eventually, raising their families in different cities, each was forced to confront unfaithful husbands—in Maxine’s case, an increasingly violent man who would become responsible for her death. Through these shifts of time and with an expanding consciousness, Kohler subtly seeks to unravel secrets that emerge within each individual. Maxine’s life and the mysterious circumstances surrounding her death serve as a touchstone and became a source of inspiration for the author’s writing. “In story after story,” writes Kohler, “I conjure up my sister in various disguises, as well as other figures from our past. Her bright image leads me onward like a candle in the night. Again and again in various forms and shapes I write her story, colored by my own feelings of love and guilt.” In spare, delicate prose, Kohler brings a seasoned novelist’s skills to this deeply moving, compelling memoir.
