Description
Book SynopsisA masterful achievement: a joint coming-of-age story and an achingly poignant portrait of the strange, painful, ultimately life-sustaining bonds between sisters.
Lark and Robin are half-sisters whose similarities end at being named for birds. While Lark is shy and studious, Robin is wild and artistic. Raised in Montreal by their disinterested single mother, they form a fierce team in childhood regardless of their differences. As they grow up, Lark excels at school and Robin becomes an extraordinary pianist. At seventeen, Lark flees to America to attend college, where she finds her calling in documentary films, and her sister soon joins her.
Later, in New York City, they find themselves tested: Lark struggles with self-doubt, and Robin chafes against the demands of Juilliard. Under pressure, their bond grows strained and ultimately is broken, and their paths abruptly diverge. Years later, Lark''s life is in tatters and Robin''s is wilder than ever. As Lark tries
Trade Review
This novel sneaks up on you the way life does - full of chance and yearning. It's a precise, subtle, sad and graceful story about how we care for each other, and how we try to, and how we fail * Jia Tolentino, author of Trick Mirror *
I hesitate to call Dual Citizens Alix Ohlin's best book - because her previous ones are among my favourite recent works of fiction - but its perhaps her most entrancing. This is a spellbinding fever-dream of a tale that will leave you forever changed, and will surely earn Ohlin a place among the greatest writers of our generation. I loved it -- Joanna Rakoff, author of My Salinger Year
Alix Ohlin is a thrilling and singular writer who intimately captures and celebrates a lifetime of desires, disappointments and everyday triumphs in these two sisters' lives. I couldn't stop thinking about it: Dual Citizens will take up residency in your mind and heart for quite some time -- Jennifer Gilmore, author of The Mothers
Ohlin's story of sisters wraps its tendrils deep as any family. Dual Citizens leads a reader through landscapes of compassion and crisis in this deeply felt, iridescent novel of the spells and surprises a sibling creates -- Samantha Hunt, author of The Dark Dark
Luminous . . . Ohlin's touching, beautifully crafted story traces the unbreakable bond holding sisters together, even when miles apart, through many changes * Booklist *
[Dual Citizens] is a lovely, deeply moving work. A lyrical account of the lives of two women, their failures and hopes, and ultimately their quiet redemption. . . . [Ohlin] asks smart, complicated questions not only about family, but also about the nature of narrative itself - whether in literature or in film - about the difference between artifice and truth and the meaning of nostalgia * Kirkus *
[An] engrossing, intricate tale . . . Ohlin smartly chooses a broad scope and expertly weaves disparate lives into a singular thread, making for an exceptional depiction of the bond between sisters * Publishers Weekly *
