Brothers and Sisters
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Published in 1929, Brothers and Sisters belongs to the early phase of Ivy Compton-Burnett’s distinctive exploration of family life as a theatre of concealed conflict. Within an outwardly respectable English household, the relationships between parents and children, brothers and sisters, are shaped by competing loyalties, emotional dependence and the unequal distribution of authority. Rather than relying on elaborate description, Compton-Burnett allows character to emerge through conversation, as casual remarks disclose grievances and apparently harmless exchanges acquire unsettling implications.
The novel anticipates the mature style for which she became renowned: compressed, theatrical dialogue, psychological precision and a dry humour that exposes the absurdities of social convention. Beneath its domestic setting lies a searching inquiry into the ways families perpetuate power, suppress dissent and confuse affection with possession. An illuminating work in the development of a singular British novelist, Brothers and Sisters offers an early glimpse of the unsettling intelligence that would distinguish her later fiction.
From the book
“We are all more or less at the mercy of our families.”
— Ivy Compton-Burnett, Brothers and Sisters
On Brothers and Sisters
“The first thing that strikes the reader of Ivy Compton-Burnett’s novels is that they are written almost entirely in dialogue.”
— Diane Johnson, The New York Review of Books