BOOK REVIEW: THE SINGER SISTERS by Sarah Seltzer

BOOK REVIEW: THE SINGER SISTERS by Sarah Seltzer
Little, Brown || Hachette Australia, August 2024
Paperback, rrp $24.99
Reviewed by Shane Pinnegar
72%

The Singer Sisters are Judie and Sylvia Zingerman, Sixties folk stars and siblings with a complicated family history. Pre-fame, Judie, desperate to find a little teenaged independence from her domineering mother, defiantly follows rising star Dave Cantor to New York, becoming part of an extended family of adoring muses in thrall to him, even though he treats them like servants. In a fit of pique, she surrenders her virginity to the first folk singer to pay her a little attention, with devastating consequences.

Jump forward to 1996, and Judie and Dave’s daughter Emma is on the cusp of indie rock fame herself, if only she can hold herself together through drug binges, toxic relationships and – most devastating of all – the long-buried secret which threatens to implode them all, the reason Judie quit the music business at the height of her and Sylvie’s fame.

It’s easy to make parallels with Daisy Jones & The Six here, although The Singer Sisters is more about family through two generations than one complicated intraband relationship.

Seltzer weaves the timeline of her characters with great finesse, and sticks authentically to the folk/rock settings, making The Singer Sisters a difficult book to put down once it gets going. It probably leans a bit too far into ‘chick lit’ territory for this gnarled rocker, but it’s worth the investment as the story does pay off.

 

Category: Book Reviews