The Effect of Living Backwards

by HeidiJulavits (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2004

  $4.58

• Used

  Hardcover
  2004

  $3.44

  Alice and Edith are sisters, best friends, and arch- enemies. Alice, the 'good girl', is everything the stunning, wanton and morally whimsical Edith is not. Both have an unhealthy attraction to shame and disgrace, and both are expert manipulators -- a power that is tested and exploited when the plane they are travelling on is commandeered by a blind terrorist in what may or may not be a hijacking. When Alice is chosen to communicate with the hostage negotiator, Edith decides to align herself with the terrorist. Inexplicably drawn to the negotiator, Alice finds it harder and harder to distinguish allies from enemies in what begins to feel like an elliptical airborne game show. Trapped on the plane with a pill- popping pregnant heiress, archaeologists on their way to a reunion, a wealthy, womanising Indian man and a dog named Verne, Alice learns valuable lessons about sibling rivalry, love and about who she is -- even while she's pretending to be someone else. This is a darkly hilarious look at sisters who adore and despise each other in equal measure, who fight to overpower each other in a world in which no one can be trusted and 'the truth' is often nothing more than someone else's disturbing invention.