My Sister Chaos
You will not elude me. I will measure your every dimension, I will trace your smallest lines. I will undo you from the inside. You will feel it like waves running across your floorboards, you will feel it like water rising through your walls, you will feel it like a sudden disorientation, you will wonder what happened to your foundations.
An obsessive-compulsive cartographer trapped in the mapping of her own house. A painter turned codebreaker trying to find the lover she lost in the war. Two sisters on a collision course.
In My Sister Chaos two sisters escape an unnamed war-torn country into separate lives of exile. The cartographer is obsessed with keeping the world in order, but finds it unraveling under her own demands. Her sister, an artist, arrives unexpectedly. Her very presence is a sign of chaos for the cartographer. But in spite of this, the sister has a firm grip on the real world, and a greater connection to the past. Chaos and order in tension provide the scaffolding for this compelling work of fiction. Presented within a world of obsession and trauma it asks whether any of us is immune to the forces of destruction.
Winner: Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction (USA)
Shortlisted: Dobbie Literary Award
Finalist: Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Debut Fiction (USA)
2010 | ISBN 9781876756840 | Paperback | 200 x 130 mm | 214 pp
Reviews
Written with the precision of mathematics and the beauty of art.
—Ellen Bosman, Library Journal
This is a brilliant book. Intelligent, insightful and complex—but totally unpretentious—My Sister Chaos charts the effects of war and exile on the individual, in a clear and superbly original examination of the devastation and personal aftermath resulting from such experiences, all the while avoiding the banal sentiments often found in such novels.
—Dominique Wilson, Wetink
[My Sister Chaos] ...is marvelous. I’m still not sure I fully understand it, but it kept me up all night the night I read it and I look forward to rereading it.
—Kristina Grob, Elevate Difference
With My Sister Chaos, Lara Fergus has limned the depths of a universal subject and created a stunningly powerful novel in the process. Australia needs more voices like hers.
—Alice Nelson, The West Australian
...an endlessly fascinating read that will be hard to put down. My Sister Chaos is not a read to be missed.
—Susan Bethany, Midwest Book Review
Lara Fergus has fashioned a deeply intimate portrayal of the relationship between two sisters, made all the more affecting by the cartographer’s absorption in abstract ideas of space...This is a thought provoking and fascinating novel.
—Emmet O'Cuana
At 200 pages, this novel is slimmer than most, but rather more thought-provoking ... It deals with themes of invasion, science and loss, all handled deftly and without pretension.
—Lucy Sussex, Age
Nothing in this elegant, brilliant debut is out of place – it has obviously been crafted with thought and care. Its graceful structure reflects its content, and its compelling, well-paced plot artfully ties humanity’s most profound struggles and tragedies to maths and mapmaking.
—Kate Goldsworthy, Readings online
Lara Fergus writes a character who is subversive and dé-marqué. She is the I (eye), the focal point, watching the world. She defies the whole Western system of representation in which the female I is not reliable.
—Dominique Bourque
An enthralling story of two sisters' relationship and their struggle to overcome a traumatic past... a compelling read.
—Lyndal More, Bookseller + Publisher
I was intrigued by Lara Fergus’s bold and original use of cartographic and mathematical metaphors, which enabled her to tell a story with two of the hallmarks of a good piece of mathematics: conceptual complexity, and economical simplicity of expression.
—Robyn Arianrhod, author of Einstein's Heroes
Centred on two sisters, whose drive to represent their world locks them in symbiotic discord, My Sister Chaos is a superbly paced and decanted fable. Striving to keep chaos at bay during a regime of terror, one sister gives herself over to the mad pursuit of exhaustive mapping, while her "chaotic" twin devotes her art to the testimony of love, loss and connection. Lara Fergus’s writing keeps the heart of darkness pulsing in the light of rationality, each captive of the other, so that in the last stretches of the novella, where the entwinement of "orderly" complicity and "chaotic" resistance is raised to heightened intensity, I found I hadn’t breathed for pages.
—Marion May Campbell
Intriguing, intelligent and highly original.
—Andrea Goldsmith
Lara Fergus writes with exceptional talent, insight and fluidity. Hers is a strong, clear and intelligent voice. This is a compelling and suggestive exploration of women living in multiple forms of exile standing proudly in the company of works by Rosa Cappiello, Christa Wolf, Marguerite Duras, Jorge Luis Borges and Albert Camus.
—Gina Mercer
This fine novel grows out of the tension between order and chaos...These tensions play out in the lives of two sisters, refugees from a country destroyed by war. Names are not provided. We see most of the story from the viewpoint of the first sister; call her the mapmaker here. Her concern is with order and safety...Her sister, an artist, comes to visit, bringing a disruptive, human, unwelcome disorder to the mapmaker's bare house...The sisters' characters are perfectly drawn in just a few strokes...if you think that novels that concern the world we read about in the news must always be preachy and formulaic, you need to read this book.
—Michael W. Matthew, Bellestrista
My Sister Chaos is a ten. Fergus' words are stark while conjuring an atmosphere pregnant with meaning...Written with precision, tenderness, perception and more than a little magic, My Sister Chaos is a substantial accomplishment. This intense, devastating debut is a must-read. I can't wait for her next novel.
—Jessica Rothschuh, Amazon Customer Review
With all the trauma in the world today, a writer like Fergus can help us all understand the experiences of refugees and others caught in PTSD. By witnessing them, perhaps we all can find a path forward.
—MdBrady, Me, You, and Books
Once you enter the world of My Sister Chaos you will always be aware of how much we count on maps of all kinds as being reliable indicators of the social contract that makes living together possible and how absurd a desire this is in such a world as ours… My Sister Chaos is a gripping novel that is stylistically brilliant and thematically crucial.
—Joan Nestle, Sinister Wisdom
...Told in overlapping first-person narration, it is schematically ingenious and meticulously constructed...at its core this novel shows a deep compassion for the human predicament of when to control and when to surrender and what, finally, might be a rational response to an irrational situation.
—New Internationalist