Sisters under the skin

Press, 20 November 1982, Page 16

Sisters under the skin

The Sisterhood. By Michael Palmer. Hodder and Stoughton, 1982. 270 pp. $24.75. Relax: "The Sisterhood” is not about a cconcatenation of anti-feminism wrongs and voodoo rites. It is as if a few episodes of “The Young Doctors," have been transferred from the visual to the verbal medium. A young doctor with a traumatic past, and a young nurse with a traumatic future, become caught up in a traumatic present. The sisterhood is a sinister, but sympathetic organisation aimed at mercy- ' killing. It turns its attention to patients who indicate their wish to be detached from their life-support systems. The ■members are a female, .subversive, subculture of institutionalised euthansia. If this is. a worrying thought, bringing to mind the odd moral dilemma, the splinter group puts it into perspective. The hardbitten, spinsterish, bitter siblings amongst the sisterhood set themselves up to despatch patients for whatever profit they can wrest from the queue of loved ones anxious for their demise. The characterisation is every bit as good as the plot, Naturally, as with most hospital stories, everything is pruned in the end and love blooms, but there is a hint that not all the rot has been cut out of the system. One enormous sister • remains, her twin having met a timely death, and there is a euthanasiastic glint in her piggy eyes. There are better novels. Won Strnnffman