Vendor
	Fletcher Agency Melissa Chinchillo
Original language
English

THE SISTERS SWEET

Elizabeth Weiss

A young woman in a vaudeville sister act must learn to forge her own path after her twin runs away to Hollywood in this richly immersive debut about love, family, and friendship.

Leaving was my sister's choice. I would have to make my own.

All Harriet Szász has ever known is life onstage with her sister, Josie. As "The Sisters Sweet," they pose as conjoined twins in a vaudeville act conceived of by their ambitious parents, who were once themselves theatrical stars. But after Josie exposes the family's fraud and runs away to Hollywood, Harriet must learn to live out of the spotlight—and her sister's shadow. Striving to keep her struggling family afloat, she molds herself into the perfect daughter. As Josie's star rises in California, the Szászes fall on hard times and Harriet begins to form her first relationships outside her family. She must decide whether to honor her mother, her father, or the self she's only beginning to get to know.

Full of long-simmering tensions, buried secrets, questionable saviors, and broken promises, this is a story about how much we are beholden to others and what we owe ourselves. Layered and intimate, The Sisters Sweet heralds the arrival of an accomplished new voice in fiction.

Advance Praise

"A beautifully told coming-of-age story, The Sisters Sweet, like its heroine, embraces life with a galloping energy and irresistible curiosity."—Maggie Shipstead, New York Times bestselling author of Astonish Me

About the Author

Elizabeth Weiss earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was a Truman Capote Fellow. She currently teaches writing at the University of Iowa.

Available products
Book Published 2021-11-01 by Dial Press
Book Published 2021-11-30 by Dial Press

Comments

“At once intimate and epic, The Sisters Sweet is an ambitious, intricately constructed, and immensely satisfying story about a family of performers—both onstage and off. This is a deeply immersive novel about the lives—and aspirations—of women. I loved it.”
—Karen Thompson Walker, author of The Dreamers

"A beautifully told coming-of-age story, The Sisters Sweet, like its heroine, embraces life with a galloping energy and irresistible curiosity."
—Maggie Shipstead, New York Times bestselling author of The Great Circle

“The Sisters Sweet will charm you into another world. Weiss has conjured a lost America with wit, sorrow, and beauty—a book like a favorite old movie.”
—Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less

“The Sisters Sweet is both cinematic and humane, an expansive and gorgeously written tale of a family that’s at once spectacularly offbeat and fundamentally human.”
—Claire Lombardo, author of The Most Fun We Ever Had

The Sisters Sweet will charm you into another world. Weiss has conjured a lost America with wit, sorrow, and beautya book like a favorite old movie.

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"...a multilayered celebration of female independence in the arts during an era that often demanded feminine conventionality.” – LIBRARY JOURNAL

The Sisters Sweet is both cinematic and humane, an expansive and gorgeously written tale of a family that's at once spectacularly offbeat and fundamentally human.

Readers who enjoy bittersweet, coming-of-age stories like Anna Quindlen's Miller's Valley (2016) or The Distance Home by Paula Saunders (2018) will root for Harriet.

Issue: October 1, 2021
The Sisters Sweet. By Elizabeth Weiss Nov. 2021. 416p. Dial, $27 (9781984801548)

In 1918 Chicago, five-year old twins Harriet and Josephine Szász debut their musical act, the Siamese Sweets, though they are actually bound together by a harness their father Lenny created, to which their mother Maude only reluctantly agreed. Harriet, the more serious sister, teaches herself to read and write and tries to behave. While Josie has more natural talent, her stubbornness and independent spirit are a dangerous combination. For eleven years they are a hit on the vaudeville circuit until their act comes to an abrupt, scandalous end. Josie redefines herself and launches a successful acting career, leaving Harriet with the hard work of keeping the rest of the family out of poverty. The sacrifices she must make threaten to keep her from finding her own path to fulfillment. This debut follows the Szász family into the early 1930s. Harriet’s astute and descriptive narration is interspersed with flashbacks of Maude and Lenny’s own ill-fated careers in show business. Readers who enjoy bittersweet, coming-of-age stories like Anna Quindlen’s Miller’s Valley (2016) or The Distance Home by Paula Saunders (2018) will root for Harriet. — Maribeth Fisher

At once intimate and epic, The Sisters Sweet is an ambitious, intricately constructed, and immensely satisfying story about a family of performers - both onstage and off. This is a deeply immersive novel about the lives - and aspirations - of women. I loved it.

A beautifully told and intimate coming-of-age story, The Sisters Sweet, like its heroine, embraces life with a galloping energy and irresistible curiosity.

The roller-coaster history of an early-20th-century showbiz family.
In the prologue, a reporter arrives at the home of Harriet Szász to interview her following the death of her movie star sister, Josephine Wilder. In the reporter's eyes, as Harriet knows all too well, "I'm the family dud, the tragically abandoned second fiddle, a nobody stunned by her sister's magnificence." Harriet begins her story in the late spring of 1918, when she and her twin are 5 and their Hungarian-born father, a set designer and tailor, finally persuades their mother, a former showgirl, to reenter "the family business" by launching the girls as a singing act. Interposed between the chapters that follow the trajectory of that endeavor are flashbacks set in 1903, 1889, 1904, etc., which provide important background on key characters. These are at first intentionally mysterious, identifying people already introduced (mother, father, etc.) by proper names that haven't yet been revealed. It's kind of fun when you connect the dots and figure out who's who, but it makes for confusion in the first third of the book. The girls' career has barely begun when the Spanish flu shuts down the theaters and sends them back to their mother's dull family in Ohio, run by her brother-in-law, a priggish pastor with ambitious dreams of his own. Then Daddy has a brainstorm—they will reintroduce the girls as Siamese twins! The ruse goes gangbusters until what you know is going to happen, based on reveals in the prologue, finally does: Josie gets fed up with the sister act and runs off to Hollywood. The rest of the book focuses on Harriet, who maybe really is the tragically abandoned second fiddle, but maybe she can learn to defy all the people who control her and become her own person.
Interesting characters and rich period setting balance structural flaws. A promising debut.

Have a little faith, Aquarius. November requires you to place a lot of trust in others. Many things are out of your control, particularly in your career, so having a team on your side will help. If you’re looking for love, it will only be found this month if you are willing to be open and vulnerable. Travel is auspicious, so look for opportunities to learn and grow while far from home. Check out The Sisters Sweet by Elizabeth Weiss. Harriet and Josie are twins who pose as conjoined twins for a vaudevillian act. But when Josie can no longer sustain the lie, she spills their secret and moves to Hollywood. Harriet is left alone to keep their family afloat — and to try to find out who she is by herself in the process.
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