What If Your Sister Wrote A Novel And It Sold More Copies Than Yours?

What if your sister wrote a novel and it sold more copies than yours?

I’m sure you love your sister – of course you do! – but how would you feel if she suddenly decided to start writing novels when that has always been your territory? And what if her debut received better reviews and sold more copies than any of yours? Would your reaction be unmitigated happiness for her? Really?

I explored the theme of sisters as rivals in my new novel Jackie and Maria, after discovering that Jackie Kennedy Onassis and her younger sister Lee Radziwill had a complex, competitive relationship that made them grow apart in adult life. It started me thinking about other competitive sisters, and I remembered that literature has plenty of examples.

The Brontë sisters might have presented a united front but behind the scenes passions were inflamed. All three had their first novels published in 1847 and the initial frontrunner was Charlotte’s Jane Eyre, while Emily’s Wuthering Heights attracted a lot of criticism, and youngest sister Anne’s Agnes Grey did reasonably well.

But in 1848, Anne published The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, an ambitious book, highly acclaimed today for its feminist themes. Straight away it sold well, boosting sales for her first novel too, and critics picked up on the fact that it criticised the kind of women who fall for badly behaved men – such as Heathcliff and Mr Rochester, her sisters’ famous creations. In 1849 Anne died, at the age of twenty-nine, and Charlotte made the unilateral decision to remove Wildfell Hall from sale. As a result, Anne’s literary reputation never achieved the heights of her sisters’ although many believe it deserves to. Sour grapes on Charlotte’s part? Looks like it.

Margaret Drabble says that as a child she worshipped her elder sister, Antonia S. Byatt, but their mother’s thwarted ambitions led her to put immense pressure on them both to succeed. Drabble was the first to publish a novel, followed a year later by Byatt – and both wrote about sisters who were rivals, in what appear to be thinly veiled portrayals of each other.

To date, Drabble has published 19 novels and been made a Dame of the British Empire, while Byatt has published 11 novels, 5 volumes of short stories and several biographies, and has won the coveted Booker Prize. I’d say they were neck and neck in achievements, but the damage hasn’t healed. “It’s sad, but our feud is beyond repair,” Drabble said when they were in their seventies and had scarcely spoken for decades.

Sometimes a rift develops when one sister moves into the other’s territory. Bestselling author Jackie Collins was said to be less than impressed in 1988 when her actress sister Joan signed a multi-million-dollar book deal with Jackie’s publisher, even working with her editor. She must have been laughing up her sleeve when Joan’s third novel was rejected by Random House for being ‘unpublishable’, in a case that ended up in the courts. They don’t appear to have repaired all the bridges by the end of Jackie’s life because she kept her six-year battle with breast cancer secret from Joan until two weeks before she died.

Sibling rivalry often originates in childhood, if a child feels their parents unfairly favour one over the other. The Bouvier sisters didn’t fall out over books, but over men. Lee always felt that Jackie was their daddy’s favourite and reacted by stealing the limelight whenever she could. She pranced into Jackie’s coming-out party wearing a sexy, off-the-shoulder number in an attempt to upstage her older sibling, and she raced to ensure she got married first, in an era when it was still considered proper for the eldest to be first to the altar. When Jackie married a congressman, Lee trumped her by trading in her first husband for a prince, albeit one in exile. Imagine her annoyance when Jackie’s husband became President: Big Sis wins again!

Sisters can drift apart if one marries a partner the other doesn’t like, or criticises the other’s children, or doesn’t do their share of helping with ailing parents – but surely the worst transgression of all must be to sleep with your sister’s husband? According to several sources, this is exactly what Lee did with her famous brother-in-law John F. Kennedy. Lee’s first husband claims he heard them going at it when the two families were on holiday together, and friends of Jackie’s suggest she knew but – with icy self-control – said nothing.

Betrayal can work both ways. Lee had a long-term affair with Aristotle Onassis, one of the world’s wealthiest men, and always hoped he would take her to the altar. Imagine her chagrin when, five years after JFK’s assassination in Dallas, Jackie announced that she was marrying Onassis instead. Truman Capote reports Lee screaming down the telephone “How could she do this to me?”

When sisters are close, it’s a precious gift. Women tend to be empathetic, and growing up with a sister gives you unique insights that mean you understand each other better than just about anyone else. Even when Venus and Serena Williams are on opposite sides of the tennis net, they are rooting for each other. Venus says, “I just hate to see Serena lose, even against me.”

I adore my sister, but what would I do if she wrote a novel and it sold more copies than any of mine? Remember that scene in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? when Bette Davis is keeping her wheelchair-bound sister (Joan Crawford) prisoner, and serves her a dead rat on a silver platter for dinner? Something like that…

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Gill Paul’s novel about Jackie Kennedy and Maria Callas is published in the US and Canada as Jackie and Maria, and in the UK as The Second Marriage

Find out more about her on her website http://gillpaul.com/

Follow her on Twitter https://twitter.com/GillPaulAUTHOR

Jackie and Maria / The Second Marriage

 

 

 

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips