The Girls (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

The youngest of four sisters, a noted New York writer and critic, eighty-year-old Jenny has flown to Miami Beach to help her flamboyant sister Flora (the Sandra Bernhardt of the senior set) deal with their ailing older siblings. Eva, ninety-five, is still elegant and articulate: "They come if it's convenient," she ventures between wine toasts to her continuing years. Naomi is ever a beauty at ninety--and as vain as they come: "He's crazy about me, but I just brush him off." Despite their fragile bodies, they are women to be reckoned with--and Jenny and Flora have their hands full. As they strive to keep their sisters comfortable and cared for, an explosive history of sibling rivalry is reignited--one that illuminates each of their long lives, the tender joys and sorrows, and the bittersweet ache for life, especially in its twilight
years. . . .