Pinkerton's Sister [Paperback]

PLEASE READ THIS BOOK ! It is superbly written, and it is also very very funny, a point not brought out by the reviews I have read. I have never laughed so much, and I do not normally find books hilarious. Don't be put off by negative reviews. This is a treasure of a book. Humour is an individual taste, and there may be someone out there who fails to enjoy this book. He or she will be the loser. It is a serious novel, too; there are many truths and perceptions in the flow of satire on the worthy citizens that Alice comes into contact with. One example of its wit: one of Alice's betes noir, all swathed in tartan rugs and veils for an outing in a 19th century automobile, is said to look like a "kidnapped Scottish beekeeper. "

Don't hesitate ! Read it ! Beg or borrow it ! Buy it ! Encourage the author to hurry to the publishers with the next two books; the wait will be agony, but I'll read it again whilst I'm waiting.

I have now finished Pinkerton's Sister - but it has by no means finished with me! It's clearly one of those books which stay with one, long after reading. Alice has stayed in my mind as a personality I had met and cared about, and wanted to meet again. She didn't disappoint me, though I ached for her as well as continuing to delight in her ability to destroy the pomposity of her society in a few(?) well-chosen words and images. The description of the attack on Michaelangelo's David ( and his response) had me almost in tears with laughter. In fact, I don't remember when I last read a book that caused me to laugh out loud so much. Nearly 800 pages of her subversive humour was a joy. The literary references, the wordplay (I have a friend for whom a pun-box would be a good idea!), Alice's precision about punctuation, which puts Lynn Truss in the shade....she's a treasure. Mind you, I'm not sure I would like to meet her in real life: there are hints of the Jane Austen we see in the letters, where the caustic comments make one catch one's breath. It's not hard to see why the people she had to live among found her difficult!
I read only the first couple of pages of Part 3, and I was tense with anxiety for her, as the shadows drew round her. The change of mood is impressive, - and I almost wept for her and Annie, as I read the Pass the Parcel sections, while still shaking with laughter at the Celestial City. The way in which horror is sketched in, rather than being described in sordid detail, as is currently fashionable, is, I find, so much more powerful. However, I did not react against the gory detail of the description of the death of her father, as that, I could quite believe, was how she would have reacted, and consequently I did, too. The picture of that society which emerges from Alice's comments is fascinating. No wonder she escapes into literature - and yet it's not an escape, is it? Her reading has sharpened her mind and her ability to see through the hypocrisy. . The minor characters, sometimes only sketched in as Alice observes them, are in fact very convincing even when almost caricature (the dentist!), and the interplay of relationships within the various groups, both Alice's friends and the Comstock acolytes is very convincing
Part one could almost stand alone as a satirical portrait of any self-satisfied, self-righteous, prudish society. The whole is both immensely humorous, and immensely thought-provoking.

This is a novel of startling originality, totally unlike anything I've ever read before.
It tells the life in a day of 35 year old Alice Pinkerton, the supposed sister of the Ben Pinkerton in 'Madame Butterfly', and is set in New York at the turn of the last century.
Alice, ostensibly mad in an attic, is actually very well-read and intelligent. In addition to viewing her life in terms of the novels and the poetry she has read, (this book is frighteningly literate, making you wish you had read more yourself) she takes off in surreal flights of fancy when contemplating the grotesque characters amomgst whom she finds herself: Mrs. Albert Comstock, who is the big fish in the small pond of Longfellow Park.'If she'd been on the menu at the feeding of the five thousand they wouldn't have needed the second fish and the five loaves would have been entirely surplus to requirements' and so on and so on. And you'll certainly never look at Michelangelo's 'David' in the same way again.
Thiis book is a real page-turner, Peter Rushforth clearly had a whale of a time writing it. It is laugh-aloud funny, moving, even grim at times.
It is full of fun with words: puns, alliteration, onomatopoeia, joy in the sounds of words:'She scuttled then she skittled then she broke a leg'.
One could quote from every page.
This seems to me to be a great book, even a work of genius, densely textured, multi-layered, where every word counts. It is not a book to be taken up to skim for an odd five minutes, it requires to be read carefully and attentively, but the rewards are immense.
It should qualify for one of the major literary prizes since it was published just too late to make the Booker long list.
It is a wonderful achievement.

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