My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece

By: Annabel Pitcher / Narrated By: David Tennant

Length: 5 hrs and 56 mins

Okay, finished this, like, ages ago… When can I stop crying…?!

I’m just sitting here, laptop open, fingers barely hovering over the keyboard, and basically I’m going for the keys based on muscle memory. It’s kinda sorta because I’m, quite simply, staring at a bare wall and am still sobbing. How beautifully wrought this is, how completely and unutterably stellar.

Perfection all around?

This writing is sacred.

It’s beyond lovely, and with David Tennant’s narration, it is truly a perfect Listen.

Jamie is 9-years old going on 10. He can’t cry; his family has fallen apart; his big sister Rose lives on the mantelpiece. She’s in a golden urn. Well, most of her is. Some bones, bits of skull perhaps. But part of her is also in a grave. So, it looks like both Dad AND Mum got their dearest wishes. Dad wanted ashes kept close; Mum wanted a grave to visit.

And Jamie? Well, they wonder why he won’t cry because to them, the end of the world has happened. Killed in a terrorist attack, blown to bits when Rose was herself only 10-years old, when she didn’t come when called, when she chose to dance and twirl in circles, fast then faster, then all hell broke loose, and now Mum has run off with a man from her support group, and Dad has found his way into a bottle he will NOT crawl out of. When big sister Jas, Rose’s twin, comes home on her… their… birthday with pink hair and a piercing, no longer looking anything like Rose, that’s it. Nobody even tries anymore.

Good thing Jamie and Jas have each other. Good thing Jamie has loving Roger, his ginger cat. Good thing Jamie, Roger, Jas, and Dad have left London to start afresh. And that’s about it as far as Good Things go because Jamie is verrrrry unpopular at school, quiet, odd, forever wearing the Spiderman shirt Mum sent him 2-days late for his birthday (He HAS to keep it on, day after day, just in case Mum decides to visit him, see how he’s doing). But Sunya, a bright girl with an outsized personality has befriended him, thinking that he too is a superhero. And danged if her hijab doesn’t fly about her, just like a superhero’s cape, when she runs.

But Jamie and she can’t be friends because Muslims Killed Your Sister is what Dad has told him over and over and over.

And I’ll leave it there, shall I? Jasmine wondering how to cope when she’s only 15, when she’s a person in her own right, when one half of her was blown to smithereens five years ago, when Dad can’t hold down a job, and when she’s making her little brother his lunches for school. When she’s the person to buy Jamie deodorant knowing that love for Mum, his desperate longing, makes it absolutely impossible for him to take off the shirt.

Jamie learning that the world is a large place, but maybe, just maybe, if he dots all the i’s and crosses all the t’s the correct way, if he dreams the proper dreams, Life might be a good place, might be like all those boxes in the basement that are marked: Sacred. Rose’s things.

Author Annabel Pitcher writes lovingly of her characters, even when the most horrific things are happening to them, when they make the wrong choices, when they stand aside, paralyzed by fear (Or drink). She gently weaves the most beautiful language in and out, like Jamie breathing in Roger’s warm ginger fur, like Jas painting her nail black, like Dad trying to make hot chocolate and not quite doing it properly. She writes like a warm squeeze that you seriously didn’t expect to come, heartening, even if her story-crafting has left you devastated.

And Tennant? Brilliant. I’m shaking my head right now, unable to believe just how completely and thoroughly amazed I am by the performance, by how shredded my heart is. And just when I thought I couldn’t cry harder, Tennant switches tones for the beauty of Sunya, the awesomeness of friendship, the sweetness of a mole that twitches when Jamie watches her smile. Brilliant actor, yes, without a doubt. But that he could relay so very, very much with just the way he moderated his voice? Oh god, how he had me just wrecked with emotion.

I sooooo wish I’d chosen this for our little audiobook club, but we never know what a book is going to be like before we start it. And we always feel bad when it’s our own turn and we choose duds, like it’s a personal failing or something. This, however, oh how I do wish we could’ve shared the experience!

Do I recommend this? By all means, PLEASE give it a shot. Dunno how anyone could rate it less than 5-stars for ALL it addresses with warmth, sensitivity, and a gentleness that leaves you breathless, agonized, and in tears.

Drop dead gorgeous. Simply stunning.

There, I’ve said all I can say. Listen to this, be brought to your knees by it. And then somehow? Find yourself smiling at the end.

Grateful for the journey.