The Bird Sisters by Rebecca Rasmussen

At the primary school that I work at we teach the children to paint pictures with words which is exactly what Rebecca Rasmussen has done in her rather marvellous novel The Bird Sisters.
At is axis is the deeply entwined and linked lives of Milly and Twiss, two sisters whose lives are a testimony to the givingness of love and its ability to take you to those places that could easily be replaced by loves rival: bitterness.
Surrounded by dysfunction and well aware of how their community perceives them; wiry, strong, steadfast, canny, cunning, caustic and humorous to a fault these sisters will leave you with a dusting of magic and an awareness that life's often rocky path can be a testimony to the ability of the human spirit to forgive, to love, to find goodness, to be empathetic and in touch with what really matters without losing hope and with an ability to look at life with a wonderment that belies age and life experiences.
It speaks to Rasmussen's ability that as you read each page you can smell the smells, feel the grass, see the lightning, walk the greens, visualise Daddy's barn workings, understand Mummy's obsession with A Day In the Life of... identify with the remoteness, the isolation, futile dreams, betrayal, the ashes of failure and yet at no time is this book depressing. It is lush and vivid, lifting the spirit and hooking one into a bonding with Milly and Twiss and an understanding of those that surround them with a richness and compassion that leaves you thinking... how amazing!
And did I mention the humour, its there in all its glory.

the girls by Lori Lansens

The story of conjoined twins Ruby and Rose Darlen this book takes of like a rocket and never really stops as you journey through two rather amazing lives. They spend their whole lives together in a small town. They grow, they hurt, they love, they hate, they have adventures, a pregnancy, death, loss, laughter, a great intelligence and a love of life that although splintered and fragmented in places leaves you reeling.
This book opens your eyes wide to the pain and the finger pointing that difference brings yet you are never left with a feeling of bitterness, and you want to shout and holler at their success's and cry over the failures and the some what cruel hand that fate deals them, their sense of humour is magnificent and rather wicked, lots of laugh out loud moments.
Lori Lansens paints her characters in vivid shades of prose, sparser for some than others, but never less than colourful and with a very rare depth and empathy for what really makes people tick, the way life plays out and how the media often informs our lives in unexpected ways, how it shapes our interests and often takes a very simple like or dislike and makes it life changing.
In even her most difficult and hard to like characters a humanity peeks through often in the most unlikely ways.It is never more true than in this book that wisdom is a wonderful gift and when you turn the last page you know that really love wins out in the end.