The first appearances are not encouraging: a 700-page novel, 25 years in the writing, which takes as its subject the creative process itself; a dauntingly post-modern ‘work of imagination about the imagination’ (blurb’s italics). Set in late 19th-century New York, the central character — and titular sister — is Alice, a ‘madwoman in the attic’ straight out of Victorian literature. Alice’s entire experience is conditioned by her lonely immersion in books (‘no one was as close to her as words on a page’) and Peter Rushforth tells the story of one day in her life using the lines and ideas she has effortfully gleaned from her favourite authors.

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