Sibling relationships, especially those between sisters, fascinate Julia Glass, winner of the National Book Award in 2002 for Three Junes and author of The Whole World Over.

''Siblings are more related to us than any other person on the planet,'' says the novelist, who appears Friday at Books & Books in Coral Gables. ``But the biology that determines a reliance can also bring rivalry.''

In her latest novel, I See You Everywhere (Pantheon, $24.95), Glass delves headfirst into the lives of two different sisters, Louisa and Clement, exploring how their bond ebbs, flows and develops over the course of 25 years. Each character takes a turn narrating the story.

The book arose from Glass' relationship with her younger sister, Carolyn, who, 16 years ago at the age of 31, inexplicably committed suicide.

''These two sisters are very much shadows of myself and my sister,'' says Glass, 52, who lives with her two sons, 7 and 12, and their father in Massachusetts, her home state. Her relationship with her only sibling was ''sometimes fraught,'' she says, but it was ''irreplaceable'' to her.

Still, I See You Everywhere is fiction, Glass says from Washington, D.C., while on book tour. Her appearances have been well received, she says: ``I have a great audience.''

But the current economic crisis is apparent wherever she goes.

``Not so many people are buying books. I hope they're not coming to readings and then going home and buying the book online. It would be a tragedy if the independent bookstores were to suffer hugely because of the financial situation.''

Q:How is I See You Everywhere different from your first two novels?

A: First of all, it really is a collection of very tightly linked stories. I don't even call it a novel. It's much more episodic than the other two. Some of the stories that came together in this book were written way before Three Junes. I wrote one of the stories and submitted it to a contest, and it won. One of the judges said he hoped I would be writing more about these two sisters. At the time I was protesting mightily that I would never write a novel. But then I started thinking, what if I did write more about them? Would it be therapeutic? The two sisters' relationship was very much a personal reflection, a kind of personal archaeology about the relationship that I had lost.

Q: Why not write a memoir?

A: I didn't want to write a memoir. I wasn't setting about trying to investigate and solve the mystery of my sister's life and death. I wanted to write particularly about the sibling relationship. There's a certain zeitgeist out there about sisters, that sisters have a deeper bond than any other siblings. Maybe that's not true, but all I had was a sister, so that's all I know. Women who are related by blood can have a particularly intense kind of connection -- and rivalry. Women are extremely open with each other and often in very blunt ways. When you go to a sister in a moment of crisis, you know you'll find a reliable port in a storm, but she can also give you some painful, hard truths about yourself that no one else will tell you.

This book is fiction. While a lot of it, certainly the core relationship, was based on my relationship with my sister, there is a lot of invention, divergence from the real story. Not a single passage of dialogue really happened.

Q:You drew on so many of your own experiences for this book -- divorce, breast cancer, your sister's suicide -- why did you wait to write this book until now?

A: I had always wanted these tales to become a book, but it's good that this is my third book and not my first. It gave me the perspective of time.

Q.Was it painful after all those years to re-enter this territory? Or was it therapeutic?

A: At this longer distance -- and I still miss my sister terribly at times -- it was no longer therapeutic. Although at times my emotions were very strong, especially toward the end. I found myself slowing down in a way that was baffling to me. I don't believe in writer's block. I knew it wasn't that. I realized finally that there was a secret part of me that thought when I finished the book that I would have some sort of epiphany about my sister. And I had to realize that I would finish the book without that. That part of the book will never come to end.

Q:Was it cathartic?

A: No, it was transitional. It didn't bring me closure but certainly brought to a resolution my desire and need to shape this part of my life.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I've written 250 pages of a novel told from the point of view of four men of different generations. It's another family novel. But this one is set in a fictional town west of Boston, a doppelganger for the town where I grew up. So I guess in a sense, I'm bringing my fiction home.

Amy Canfield is a freelance writer in Portland, Me.

Join the discussion

Note: If this is your first time using our NEW commenting system, you will have to LOG OUT and then LOG BACK IN.

The Miami Herald is pleased to provide this opportunity to share information, experiences and observations about what's in the news. Some of the comments may be reprinted elsewhere in the site or in the newspaper. We encourage lively, open debate on the issues of the day, and ask that you refrain from profanity, hate speech, personal comments and remarks that are off point. In order to post comments, you must be a registered user of MiamiHerald.com. Your username will show along with the comments you post. Thank you for taking the time to offer your thoughts.

     Showing: Oldest first Newest first Most-recommended first Least-recommended first

@Nyx.AuthorDisplayName@ wrote on @Nyx.PostedAtTime@:

@Nyx.CommentBody@

@Nyx.Recommender@ @Nyx.AbuseReporter@