Books: Sisters doing it for themselves

Fiction: Between Sisters, Cathy Kelly, Orion, hdbk, 490 pages, €25.50

Juggling act: The women author Cathy Kelly writes about are also the women she writes for

Anne Cunningham

Cathy Kelly's latest novel involves two sisters in their thirties, Cassie and Coco. Cassie is a married mother-of-two teenagers, working full time, has an idiot for a husband and spends most of her days running on empty. Coco, the younger, is a confirmed singleton, having been engaged before, and is not interested in ever finding a "grand amour", secretly knowing that the jilted ex-fiancé was it. She also works hard running her own haute couture vintage clothes shop.

They are two ordinary sisters. What's not so ordinary is their family background. Their mother disappeared when they were tots and never came back. They were reared by their paternal grandmother, Pearl, as their father died not many years later, heartbroken and crushed.