A sweeping, unforgettable novel from The New York Times best-selling author of Maine, about the hope, sacrifice, and love between two sisters and the secret that drives them apart.
'A masterpiece . . . Sullivan spins the captivating history of Nora, reaching all the way back to a little Irish village in the late 1950s. This is a place where electricity is a luxury and some girls are still subjected to arranged marriages. There we see nervous Nora preparing to leave everything and everyone she knows to join her fiancé, Charlie, in the United States . . . To read this engrossing novel is to become invested in these "entirely resilient and impossibly fragile" people' Ron Charles, Washington Post
'With tenderness and a knack for depicting Irish grandmothers that anybody who has one will appreciate, Sullivan celebrates ordinary people doing their best to live saintly lives' Time
'A fascinating, riveting read' Sarra Manning, Red
'Fabulous and smart' Emma Straub, New York Times
Reminiscent of both Colm Toibin's
Brooklyn and Matthew Thomas'
We Are Not Ourselves, this enveloping novel follows a fraught Irish family through unimaginable trials. It introduces its two main characters as young sisters ready to emigrate from Ireland to America and follows them through the rest of their lives. All of Sullivan's characters leap off the page. You don't read this book; you breathe it
