Look at Me

What happens when you suddenly find out you have a sister you never knew about? Lizzie and Ig and their father are still recovering from the death of their mother Margaret when their half-sister Eunice enters their lives. Eunice is married to Mike but they suddenly split up and Eunice bemoans the fact that she has no one else to turn to except her new found family as she has fallen out with her adoptive mother. So they let her stay until she gets back on her feet. Lizzie resents the way Eunice infiltrates the family and their routines. It all comes to a head when Eunice's and Lizzie's father holds a party for the third anniversary of Margaret's death.

I admit this is difficult for me to review in an unbiased manner because like Eunice I am adopted and have found my biological family on both sides. And so I have direct experience of being that 'other' sister, the one nobody really wants to acknowledge. However, there the similarity ends because Eunice is very unlikeable as a character. She's needy to an extreme and has little insight into how she's impacted on this family. Told from Lizzie's point of view, we have sympathy for her although we come to understand in the end that she is just as damaged as Eunice and needs her more than she thinks she does.

Duguid writes well and this is an intriguing tale. But it was very conflicting for me because of my personal experience. Nevertheless, Duguid has a good handle on some of the issues that arise from this situation and is not insensitive to the adoptee experience despite her depiction of Eunice.