Description: The narrator of "Sister Crazy" is the neurotic but lovable loner that Jemima Weiss, the middle child in a family of five, has become. Her adult troubles -- she lives mostly in her own fascinating mind, and dabbles in "marking" herself with knives -- are intertwined with the drama of her childhood. In each of these seven episodes, Jem revisits the events of her formative years and elaborates on her almost mythological view of her siblings and parents: her gruff Jewish father, whom she saw as a gunslinging cowboy on the range; her sensitive Gentile mother, who had witchlike powers of discernment about her large brood; her charismatic, offhanded older brother Jude, now a foreign correspondent and still the main object of her affection; her ethereal but secretly grounded little sister Harriet, who communes with animals and birds; and so on.

Through Jem's voice, crackling with humor and straight talk, we learn how each of these characters represents a whole system of thoughts and feelings in her world, and we experience at firsthand the magic of a large, tight family, as well as its emotional perils. The triumph of the book is the satisfying intimacy we feel with the characters, and with the curiously persevering adult Jem, who progresses steadily toward a tentative peace with herself as a woman, outside the cozy cocoon of family.

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