Shred Sisters

Here are the ways I could start this story:

Olivia was breathtaking.

For a long time, I was convinced that she was responsible for everything that went wrong.

No one will love you more or hurt you more than a sister.

October 2024 – Grove Atlantic

“Shred Sisters is a brilliantly written, emotionally gripping saga that delves into the complexity of sisterhood, mental health, and resilience. Spanning decades, this utterly engrossing novel asks readers many profound and pressing questions: Can we fully know the ones we love? Does love always require self-sacrifice? Can we understand ourselves without understanding our family? One of the best books I’ve read in years.” –Chloé Cooper Jones, two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and author of Easy Beauty.

“Betsy Lerner has created a richly layered family novel that manages to be raucously funny, insightful, and tender—often on the same page. I’m not sure how she did it, but I gleefully went along for the ride and was bereft when it was over. I will be thinking about the Shred Sisters for a long time.”
–Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, author of The Nest and Good Company

“Betsy Lerner articulates moments I have observed but never put into words, and I both laughed out loud and was deeply moved. A brilliant novel.” —Alice Elliott Dark, author of Fellowship Point

“I love this book. It moves like a souped-up pickup truck.” —Patti Smith, author of Just Kids and M Train

“Wise to the woe and wonder of families and the bedeviling forces that shape them, Betsy Lerner’s masterful new novel, Shred Sisters, delivers you through grief and devastation toward tremulous, exquisite hope.” -Bill Clegg, author of Did You Ever Have a Family

“A cocktail of raw poetry, needle sharp insights, and propulsive, almost projectile honesty. I can’t get over how deftly it pivots from funny to mean to vulnerable to wise, often on a single page. Lerner explores the contours of complicated relationships with an intoxicating ferocity that – we come to realize – amounts to no less than an act of love.” —Leah Hager Cohen, author of Strangers and Cousins and To & Fro

“The Shreds are in devastating and hilarious pain. Betsy Lerner has turned her memoirist’s eye on a fictional family with candid and surprising results.”
—Jill Eisenstadt, author of From Rockaway and Swell

Deliciously compelling, as poignant as it is funny, and sneakily profound about the myriad ways family shapes and undoes us, Shred Sisters will take over your mind and heart (and life!) until the very last page. -Edan Lepucki, author of California and Time’s Mouth