For readers of Perfume and Alias Grace, and inspired by a true story, this is the glorious, grubby and magnificent tale of the rise and fall of the seven long-haired Swiney sisters...
It is the age of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, when Europe burns with a passion for long-flowing locks. And when seven sisters, born into fatherless poverty in Ireland, grow up with hair cascading down their backs, to their ankles, and beyond, men are not slow to recognise their potential.
It begins with a singing and dancing septet, with Irish jigs kicked out in dusty church halls. But it is not the sisters' singing or their dancing that fills the seats: it is the torrents of hair they let loose at the end of each show. And their hair will take dark- hearted Darcy, bickering twins Berenice and Enda, plain Pertilly, gentle Oona, wild Ida and fearful, flame-haired Manticory - the inimitable narrator of their on-and-off stage adventures - out of poverty, through the dance halls of Ireland, to the salons of Dublin and the palazzi of Venice. It will bring some of them love and each of them loss. For their past trails behind the sisters like the tresses on their heads, and their fame and fortune will come at a terrible price...
About the Author
Michelle Lovric is the author of four novels - Carnevale, The Floating Book (winner of a London Arts Award and chosen as a WH Smith Read of the Week), The Remedy (longlisted for the 2005 Orange Prize for Fiction) and The Book of Human Skin (a TV Book Club pick in 2011) as well as four children's books. Her book Love Letters: An Anthology of Passion was a New York Times bestseller. She divides her time between London and Venice.
Industry Reviews
Michelle Lovric is devilishly clever, fiendishly comic and generally just an irresistible novelist. I delighted in every page
