The Old Fire by Elisa Shua Dusapin

Octave says it couldn’t have been easy for Véra, growing up with a sister as brilliant as me.

In the wake of her father’s death, Agathe leaves New York and returns to her childhood home in the French countryside, after fifteen years away. She and her sister Véra have not seen each other in all that time apart. Now, they must empty their home before it is knocked down. Véra stopped speaking when she was six, and as the pair clean and sift through a lifetime’s worth of belongings, old memories and resentments surface.

Tender, melancholic and evocative, The Old Fire is an exploration of time and memory, of family and belonging, of the unsaid and the unanswered. It is also a graceful and profound exploration of how loss and grief can live alongside life and abundance.