Monday, March 16, 2009

THE ALMOST ARCHER SISTERS by LIsa Gabriele

Gabriele's reading at Harbourfront convinced me to pick up a copy of her new novel, the story of two sisters who couldn't possibly lead more disparate lives: Beth Ann and Georgia "Peachy" Archer. Beth is a fashionable, skinny bitch New Yorker who has abandoned her farm girl upbringing and embraced the shallowness of a frenetic professional life while Peachy abandoned her dream of becoming a social worker, when she got knocked up at nineteen and married Beth's high school sweetheart.

On one of Beth's occasional fly by night visits to her family in rural southern Ontario, she makes an unforgivable decision and that decision pushes the plot forward and has the sisters exchanging lives, if only for a few days.

What kept me reading THE ALMOST ARCHER SISTERS was a need to witness Peachy exact her fumbling revenge in one of my favourite cities, where even the pavement hums with expectation.

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