When My Sister Was Cleopatra Moon - Softcover

'Like Amy Tan and Gish Jen before, Park describes the difficulties facing second generation children - daughters as alien to their mothers as their blonde-haired classmates' Independent

Cleo Moon is beautiful, alluring and fiercely independent. Marcy Moon is all that her older sister is not: plain, studious, and quietly adoring. When Cleo comes home from college, Marcy realises her older sister is no longer the person she once idolised. Their summer together is one of emerging sexuality and a sudden death - events that cloud Marcy's vision of life. Cleo lives harder and faster, leaving Marcy behind, with letters from her absent father and a mother who has never fully assimilated to America. Years later, Marcy is still racing to catch up and when her brother-in-law dies in a freak accident, she rushes to offer support and solace to Cleo.

Their reunion opens the floodgates of family memory, and Marcy is forced to re-examine her childhood hero-worship for her older, glamorous sister, and the cultural conflicts that arise from being first generation children of Korean immigrants.

'Fast and racy...Park opens us to the notion that when it comes to family, thing aren't usually the way they seem' USA Today

'Frances Park's gently evocative style is allied to a complex story-telling that balances past and present, accurate and deluded perceptions of reality' Times Literary Supplement