‘Joanna Trollope's latest novel about the emotional turmoil that is family life sees her back on home ground in Gloucestershire, where we meet Nathalie and her younger brother David. Although raised by the same parents and fiercely loyal to each other, they are in fact adopted and have no blood ties. When they jointly decide in their late 30s to trace their separate birth mothers, it signals the start of a remarkable journey of discovery. As part of her research, Trollope gathered plenty of personal stories, and the result is a book which considers this complex subject from multiple perspectives. Astute, humane and as readable as ever’ —Mail on Sunday

‘Trollope has successfully ventured into the inner worlds of the characters and sounded their aspirations and anxieties. They are instantly recognisable to the general reader as well as to the initiated. Importantly, she sees adoption and its ambiguities as an example of contemporary relationship confusion. Many adults are unsure of their fathers, and their mothers' lives defy stereotyping ... Joanna Trollope has written an important novel, not about the merits or demerits of adoption, but about how everyone separated from their birth parents, for whatever reason, including people with sperm-donor fathers, just needs to understand what happened. It's as simple as that. She has done several hundred thousand people a huge favour, by writing a popular novel about this socially significant issue’ —Anthony Douglas, Chair of the British Association for Adoption and Fostering, Evening Standard

‘There is nothing Joanna Trollope does better than explore the minefield of family life, showing how emotional time bombs can, and often do, explode beneath a well-ordered surface. For her new novel, the 12th in her sequence of skilful and highly readable contemporary morality tales, she has chosen the biggest time bomb of all: adoption ... as in all good family dramas, the cast of supporting actors is substantial, and of course the adoption trail brings in yet more. Trollope evokes and deploys them all deftly, as she shows how disquiet and pain start to permeate the intricate network of relationships affecting the three generations and six families concerned’ —Sunday Telegraph

‘A display of grit her fans have grown to expect. Adultery, conspiracy, dilemma and death are alive and well in Trollope's Middle England. Which is why she shifts books in the sorts of quantities guaranteed to send each novel to the No. 1 spot in the bestseller charts. Trollope paints her characters with great care and it's no mean feat that despite the huge number of them, each is very distinct ... Read it' —Daily Mirror

‘Ever since she's trained her focus away from the rectory to the modern stepfamily (and even the local council estate), Trollope has written fantastic social novels. If you want lust or jealousy or sibling rivalry, look no further. She has an incisive - and deadly - eye for the minutiae of modern family life’ —Observer

‘Trollope is, as ever, a slick and stylish writer with a good ear for dialogue, and she is brilliantly perceptive about the little things that get on people's nerves’ —Daily Telegraph

‘Beneath the cosy, polished surface of her work lurks something very bleak and frantic: a depiction of the inner torment whichso many people spend their lives trying to deny. Isn't that Trollope's message, her real after-burn: that the British are damaged, brittle souls who subsume their feelings for the sake of appearances. That life's all a bit of a sham? To these ends, she likes to have her characters navigate some common, hidden darkness; she chooses an issue and constructs her novel around it. In her previous best-sellers, she used things such as stepfamilies, adultery and divorce as dramatic devices to explore character and human interaction. The theme, this time round, is adoption: a perfect subject for her, in a way, if you agree with the psychologists who say that at the heart of every adoption resides abandonment and emptiness ... Brother & Sister in that sense is no different from any other Trollope: a superbly observed, intense study of tight, narrow lives, of explosion and resolution. The melodrama is all psychological; if there is action, it is internal. This is a novel as compulsively claustrophobic as anything she has written’ —Herald

‘Deliciously readable ... perhaps the most successful writers of fiction are those who contrive to combine the delicious escapism of narrative with the virtuous afterglow of having undergone a rigorous moral workout. This is Joanna Trollope's particular talent. Fay Weldon has called her writing 'as subtle as Austen, as sharp as Bronte'. But the writer Trollope resembles more closely than either Jane Austen or any of the three possible Brontes is Mrs Gaskell, that pithy monument of sense and sensibility perfectly combined’ —The Times

‘Trollope's multitude of fans can expect to be gripped by Brother & Sister. The theme is adoption and the ripples of trauma that may engulf families when the adopted person decides to trace the birth mother ... if soul-baring is your thing, and if you are interested in exploring the challenges faced by the adopted and the lifetime of loss and guilt that can be experienced by their birth mothers, then Trollope's sympathetic treatment will keep you turning the pages’ —Daily Mail

‘People who haven't read Joanna Trollope's intelligent dissections of modern dilemmas affecting family life, love and friendship often think they know exactly what her novels are like. The image is of middle-Englanders with a whiff of bohemianism, and a line-up of female characters who could all belong to the same book group, in which they are currently reading Joanna Trollope. This theory collapses as soon as you realise you would never want to discuss a Joanna Trollope in a book group; this one in particular is to be read and savoured alone with a box of tissues to hand when you feel you should be doing something else. Brother & Sister provides insights into the ripple effect of the decision by two adults who were adopted and brought up as siblings to trace their respective birth mothers and the considerable emotional toll on all concerned’ —Times Educational Supplement

'A pageturner - pacy, absorbing and compassionate' —Daily Mail

‘No one is better at observing and reporting changes in relationships and family dynamics than Joanna Trollope. Her achievement in this book, as in others, is to conjure up a cast of sympathetic characters, give them a family crisis to tackle and allow us towatch what happens. It is rarely what you expect but is still utterly plausible’ —Daily Express

'Joanna Trollope has an uncanny knack for picking subjects that inspire instant sympathy in her readers, but then, in a wonderfully easy-to-read manner, spells out the thoughts that we ourselves less wisely harbour. Her new book looks at adoption, a subject that conjures endless curiousity and sympathy ... Trollope's story is told with her usual verve, good sense and vivacious understanding. Happily she continues to entertain as she enlightens' —Angela Huth, Waterstone's Books Quarterly

Back to top of page