This book was okay. Lots of indepth info on moths which I had to try and stay awake through. The relationship between Vivi and Ginny is interesting though and those parts of the book I flew through. ( )

Two sisters reunited after a mysterious grudge kept them apart for decades, an aristocratic manor house fallen into disrepair, family secrets galore. Sounds like the formula for a great read! But The Sister also takes a few unexpected left turns with the story. The narrator, Ginny, is an unreliable narrator, but not because she's duplicitous or manipulative; instead, she just doesn't understand people. She can talk endlessly about her scientific observations of moths, and she can accurately observe the actions of the people around her, but when it comes to understanding their feelings and motives, she simply cannot see what is right in front of her.

Ginny is a fascinating character. It's hard to make someone so oblivious both believable and sympathetic, but author Poppy Adams does a great job. The spookiness of the setting also provides a ton of atmosphere -- the isolated house, the scientific specimens strewn throughout the rooms, the brief interventions by others whose motives are completely unfathomable to Ginny and thus to us. As a result, though, the other sister, Vivian, suffers as a character because we never quite know what her role in the story is. Vivian has problems of her own, clearly, but were her feelings about the family any more accurate than Ginny's?

Altogether, this was an interesting puzzle of a story with fascinatingly ambiguous characters, but a little too ambiguous to be entirely satisfying. ( )

Thanks to whoever reviewed this favorably earlier in the year. I really enjoyed it. It's the story of two sisters told from one sister's point of view. This sister, Ginny, is revealed to have something of a personality disorder. She is obsessed with time, has trouble expressing and reading others' emotions, and adheres to a strict routine. She tells the story of her life with her sister Vivian, mother Maud, and father Clive. She lives an insular life in their crumbling Victorian mansion - rarely if ever leaving it. Her family is a long life of lepidopterists, scientists who study moths, and Ginny joins the family trade. In a series of flashbacks, she tells her family's story, always told through her somewhat unique point of view.

I found the ending a little unsatisfying, but otherwise I really liked this - satisfying story telling and interesting characters. ( )

Luckily I purchased this Audio book for a 1.00. It was a strange book that left a lot of loose ends. There are to many unanswered questions about Ginny that would have made this book so much better.
I understand the suspense is needed but Ginny's sister kept referring to how everyone protected her. Ginny does have some strange things happen to her but the story lines never play out so I still wonder what was up with their childhood. I was patient to listen to ALL the moth details thinking there were clues there but if there were I am to dense to see them. I enjoy learning about new things but If I had been reading I would have skipped much of this part of the book. Can't say I can recommend this one. ( )

Virginia "Ginny" Stone has lived her whole long life in the now-crumbling ancestral mansion in Dorset, about which her mother used to say "Either Victorians were vulgar, or we were very vulgar Victorians." Her only sibling, vivacious Vivian, comes home for the first time in almost 50 years and all the family skeletons fall out of the closet. The sisters were raised by the scientist father who dedicated his life to the study of moths, and the glamorous--then--alcoholic mother, Maud. It doesn't take long to figure out that something is off with the narrator, Ginny.

Every review of this book includes the words and phrases: secrets, moth science, Gothic, unreliable narrator, dysfunctional family.

I enjoyed this book very much and was always happy to pick it up, although, strangely, it took me three weeks to read a book just under 300 pages. But I blame that on my life and not the book.

The Behaviour of Moths was published by Virago Press and nominated for he Costa first book award. The author, Poppy Adams, hasn't published anything since, which is a shame, because I thought she showed great promise here.

My North American copy from another publisher is titled The Sister, which I thought was a terrible choice, but after reading it think it's fitting. But "The Sister" didn't intrigue me at all, so I think the original title was better. YMMV.

Recommended for: Based on reader reviews on LT and GR, most people were "disappointed" with this, or they found there were too many loose ends "not tied up," and finally "too much moth science." I disagree with all of this, but it does appear to be the prevailing opinion, and I did go into this with low expectations, so . . . I feel I'm the only person who thinks this was really good. ( )