"I love her to death. I can't imagine life without her," a woman says about her sister. Another remarks, "I don't want anyone to kill my sister because I want to have that privilege myself." With these two comments, begins this eye-opening and entertaining new book.

New York Times bestselling author Deborah Tannen is renowned for illuminating the way we communicate - and revolutionizing relationships in the process. What she did for women and men in You Just Don't Understand, and mothers and daughters in You're Wearing THAT?, she now does for sisters in a groundbreaking book that explores one of the most powerful and perplexing relationships in our lives.

Conversations between sisters reveal a deep and constant tug between two dynamics - an impulse towards closeness and an impulse towards competition, as sisters are continually compared to each other. When you're with her, you laugh your head off, and can giggle and be silly like when you were kids. But she also might be the one person who can send you into a tailspin with just one wrong word. For many women, a sister is both.

With a witty and wise voice, Tannen shares insights and anecdotes from well over a hundred women she interviewed, along with moving and funny recollections of her own two sisters. You'll come away with a profound new understanding, as well as effective techniques to improve and accessible solutions for problems in this unique and precious relationship.

Visitors to my home always notice the framed black-and-white photograph of my family. Pointing to the two seated little girls identically dressed, they ask, "Which one is you?" I always respond, "Guess!" They guess right about half the time: I'm on the right, my sister Mimi on the left. I love that people can't tell us apart, because in the photo I'm six and she's eight. Then they usually ask about the three adults standing behind us. I explain, "That's my parents and my sister Naomi. She's eight years older than I am." When they look more closely they see how much younger one of the standing women is than the other.

The question, "Which one is you?" is telling. Many sisters ask it of themselves. I hey can hardly think about who they are without thinking about how they are like or unlike their sisters. A sister is the person you might have been but aren't, by choice or by chance.

The photo also dramatizes the enormous difference that in age makes. A sister close in age is the one you played and fought with; an older sister can be much like a mother. And as with mothers, conversations with sisters can be some of the best and the worst conversations you ever have.

A word from a sister can make you laugh your head off, or giggle and be silly like when you were kids.

A word from a sister can send you into a tailspin because, as one woman put it, "She's pail of my being, she's part of the fabric of who I am. So when there's disapproval, you feel it in a place that you don't feel it with other people."

Sisters don't even need words to feel it in that place: sometimes a look is enough.

"You know Sadie doesn't approve of me sometimes," said Bessie Delany of her older sister. "She frowns at me in her big-sister sort of way." When she said this, Bessie Delany was 101 while Sadie was 103. And Sadie said. "I told Bessie that if she lives to 120, then I'll just have to live to 122 so I can take care of her." Sadie explained: "The reason I am living is to keep her living."

The Delany sisters' comments encapsulate the way sisters combine, in a uniquely intense way, two dynamics that drive all conversations and all relationships: connection and hierarchy. No one is closer than a sister who shares your family, your past, your memories. That connection is always there, whether you live together your whole lives, as the Delanys did, or see each other rarely or not at all - even if one has passed away. And sisters are also immutably arrayed by age, with resulting differences in influence and power that also endure, in obvious or subtle ways, throughout their lives. Those two dynamics, power and connection, work together and can't be pulled apart: The Delany sisters' lifelong devotion was inseparable from the fact that one was younger and the other older - and therefore protective, and maybe a tad judgmental.

Sisters are inevitably compared to each other, because they are often together and, in any case, are thought of together. Each ones character or personality tends to be described in contrast to the other's: the outgoing one and the shy one: the artist and the athlete; the smart one and the pretty one. And comparison is never far from competition. That too is built into the relationship, because sisters seek, support and approval from the same adults, and it can often seem, whether it's true or not, that love and attention given to one depletes what's available for the other. The same is true of brothers, and of sisters and brothers. Indeed, much of what I say about sisters applies to brothers too. I am certain that examples I give of sister conversations will remind many readers of their brothers and of other relationships.

Copyright © 2009 by Deborah Tannen.

Tags: Siblings, Parenting and Families

About the Author

Deborah Tannen is the author of You Just Don't Understand, which was on the New York Times bestseller list for nearly four years, including eight months at number one, and has been translated into twenty-six languages. Among her many books are The Argument Culture, Talking from 9 to 5, and That's Not What I Meant! A linguistics professor at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., she is a frequent guest on such radio and television shows as The Oprah Winfrey Show, Today, Good Morning America, CNN's TalkBack Live, and NPR's All Things Considered.