Alice and Edith are sisters, best friends, and arch- enemies. Alice, the 'good girl', is everything the stunning, wanton and morally whimsical Edith is not. Both have an unhealthy attraction to shame and disgrace, and both are expert manipulators -- a power that is tested and exploited when the plane they are travelling on is commandeered by a blind terrorist in what may or may not be a hijacking. When Alice is chosen to communicate with the hostage negotiator, Edith decides to align herself with the terrorist. Inexplicably drawn to the negotiator, Alice finds it harder and harder to distinguish allies from enemies in what begins to feel like an elliptical airborne game show. Trapped on the plane with a pill- popping pregnant heiress, archaeologists on their way to a reunion, a wealthy, womanising Indian man and a dog named Verne, Alice learns valuable lessons about sibling rivalry, love and about who she is -- even while she's pretending to be someone else.
This is a darkly hilarious look at sisters who adore and despise each other in equal measure, who fight to overpower each other in a world in which no one can be trusted and 'the truth' is often nothing more than someone else's disturbing invention.
- ISBN10 1860499252
- ISBN13 9781860499258
- Publish Date 1 April 2004 (first published 23 June 2003)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 31 December 2009
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Little, Brown Book Group
- Imprint Virago Press Ltd
- Format Paperback (UK Trade)
- Pages 336
- Language English