The Fourth Sister

by Laura Scott

Following her Seamus Heaney Prize-winning debut, So Many Rooms, this second collection tells stories, many of them with powerful historical resonance, drawing on lived experience, relationships, pain and love.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

Published February 23, 2023

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Back in 2019 I reviewed Laura Scott’s debut collection, So Many Rooms. Her second book reflects some of the same preoccupations: art, birds, colour and Russian literature. Chekhov is a recurring point of reference across the two; here, for instance, we have a found poem composed of excerpts from his letters. Scott also writes about the deaths of her parents, voicing resentment towards her father and remarking on life’s irony. As the title suggests, her family constellation includes sisters. Her godparents loom surprisingly large; her godmother was, apparently, a spy. My favourite of the poems, “Still Life,” imagines the whole of life being prized as a glass in an exhibit, appealingly pristine and praiseworthy in comparison to what we usually perceive: “the raggy sprawl of a life … the wrong turns and longing of it.” Elsewhere, metaphors are drawn from the theatre: performing lines, taking items from a wardrobe. I loved the way the pull of nostalgia is set up in opposition to the now.

Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.