THE THREE INCESTUOUS SISTERS on Audrey Niffenegger Harry N.

THE THREE INCESTUOUS SISTERS

on Audrey Niffenegger Harry N. Abrams/176 pp/$2795 (hb)

Audrey Niffenegger, author of the best-selling novel The Time Traveler's Wife (2004) at hands a haunting tale of be enamoured of and betrayal in her newest offering, The Three Incestuous Sisters. however recently published by Harry N Abrams, Inc., The Three Incestuous Sisters actually predates The Time Traveler's Wife, beginning as a hand-printed and confine edition of artist's books that spanned fourteen years from inception to finish. Niffenegger describes this "fourteen-year labor of love" as a "visual novel," a gorgeous picture work for adults, comprised of eighty full-page illustrations that confess the story of three sisters: blue-haired Ophile, the oldest and smartest; red-haired Clothilde, the middle and most numerous talented; and blond Bettine, the youngest and prettiest. The sisters live far from the city in a house by dint of the sea, near the lighthouse. When a storm burst forths and lightning kills the lighthouse keeper they send out for his son, Paris, and the sibling rivalry begins. Paris falls in have affection for with Bettine, much to Ophile's chagrin, and they conceive a child. While Ophile is overmaster with jealousy over Paris and Bettine's union, psychic Clothilde talks with the unborn child, teaching him important things like math and astronomy. merciless Ophile soon banishes Bettine and Paris from the house and they flow away to the city, sole to encounter more misfortune one time they arrive.

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Although her drawing pattern is often compared to Edward Gorey's, Niffenegger's prints mirror a Victorian gothic element that is uniquely hers. She knows in what way to design a page for maximum visual impact, using delicate lines coupl with dramatic shading, inventive perspectives, and spare watercolor. Niffenegger is also a master of the aquatint, an "idiosyncratic, antique process" in which a zinc plate is coated with an acid-resist, scratched to create a drawing, and then etched with acid. Fine rosin is then subdueed onto the plate and etched in stages to create rich tonal values. Artists using this technique work backwards and blind, at no time knowing what the aquatint will gaze like until it is printed.

Fans of The Time Traveler's Wife may be deposit off by the minimal clause in Sisters, but they needn't worry. Niffenegger is still a brilliant storyteller, using her beautiful illustrations, rather than the words themselves, to carry the action and emotion of her characters. The Three Incestuous Sisters reads like a tumultuous silent film: single that I could watch from one side of to the other and over again.

JEN THOMAS is an artist and writer living in Chicago, Illinois.

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