The Brendan Gill Lecture
- Ann DeCerbo
- Jun 7
- 2 min read
Friday, October 3, 6:00 PM at the Norfolk Library
Spanning two decades, Shred Sisters is an intimate and bittersweet story exploring the fierce complexities of sisterhood, mental health, loss and love. Betsy Lerner, celebrated author of The Bridge Ladies, gives us a wry and riveting debut novel about family and a hard-won path between two sisters.
It is said that when one person in a family is unstable, the whole family is destabilized. Meet the Shreds. Olivia is the sister in the spotlight until her stunning confidence becomes erratic and unpredictable, a hurricane leaving people wrecked in her wake. Younger sister Amy, cautious and studious to the core, believes in facts, proof, and the empirical world. None of that explains what’s happening to Ollie, whose physical beauty and charisma mask the mental illness that will shatter Amy’s carefully constructed life.
As Amy comes of age and seeks to find her place—first in academics, then New York publishing, and through a series of troubled relationships—every step brings collisions with Ollie, who slips in and out of the Shred family without warning. Yet for all that threatens their sibling bond, Amy and Ollie cannot escape or deny the inextricable sister knot that binds them. No one will love you more or hurt you more than a sister.
Betsy Lerner is the author of the popular advice book to writers, The Forest for the Trees, and the memoirs Food and Loathing and The Bridge Ladies. She received an MFA from Columbia University in Poetry. A publishing professional for more than thirty years, Lerner is a literary agent in New York. Her novel, Shred Sisters, was longlisted for a Debut Novel Award from The Center for Fiction and was selected as one of best 100 books by the New York Times.
“Wise to the woe and wonder of families and the bedeviling forces that shape them, Betsy Lerner’s masterful novel, Shred Sisters, delivers you through grief and devastation toward tremulous, exquisite hope.”
—Bill Clegg, author of Did You Ever Have a Family