This “substantial contribution to the literature on sibling relationships” (Library Journal) explores the intricacy, friction, and love in bonds between sisters. Relationships between women are often freighted with a rocky mix of emotions—devotion and disregard, affection and loathing, admiration and envy—leading to anguish and confusion on the playground, in the home, and in the boardroom. Negotiating her layered feelings toward a sister shapes a woman’s psychology as forcefully as do her relationships with her parents. Drawing on compelling interviews and new research, Terri Apter considers the many aspects of the sister relationship from birth through adulthood. The need to fight to differentiate oneself from a sister, as well the protectiveness one feels for that same person, is explained by reference to extensive psychological and biological evidence.

"Terri Apter's fascinating study of sisters lays bare particular qualities in the sister relationship which are deftly summed up in the book's subtitle..." The Times Literary Supplement "...she is lucid, funny and illuminating on a subject that has been kept in the dark for much too long." The Sunday Times "Deftly combining the latest psychological thinking with real-life case studies, she captures both the love and the rivalry that many sisters share, as well as revealing the sister relationship to be far more complex than we might think." Psychologies"

Terri Apter is a writer, psychologist, and retired Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge. Her ten books include The Sister Knot, Difficult Mothers, and What Do You Want from Me? She lives in Cambridge, England.