When I Had a Little Sister

‘If you loved Tara Westover’s Educated, get yourself a copy of When I Had a Little Sister as soon as humanly possible…beautifully under-stated…a startling, elegiac portrait of farming life in modern Britain.’ Vogue
‘Gripping and heart-wrenching’ Mail on Sunday
On a cold December day in 2013 Catherine Simpson received the phone call she had feared for years. Her little sister Tricia had been found dead in the farmhouse where she, Catherine and their sister Elizabeth were born – and where their family had lived for generations.
Tricia was 46 and had been stalked by depression all her life. Yet mental illness was a taboo subject within the family and although love was never lacking, there was a silence at its heart.
After Tricia died, Catherine found she had kept a lifetime of diaries. The words in them took her back to a past they had shared, but experienced so differently, and offered a thread to help explore the labyrinth of her sister’s suicide.
When I had a Little Sister tells a story of sisters and sacrifice, grief and reclamation, and of the need to speak the unspeakable.

Reviews

'A superb memoir….. Tricia's heart-rending biography is interwoven with welcome portraits of Simpson's bonkers ancestors, many of which are laugh-out-loud funny' Leaf Arbuthnott, Sunday Times
‘Simpson’s writing – fillets the little details that reveal the profundity and bravery of her sister’s weakening struggle with mental illness … I found this book gripping and heart-wrenching. It sticks with me’ Mail on Sunday
‘Catherine Simpson’s tormented, riveting and bleakly funny memoir analyses her sister’s life to try to find out why she killed herself; in the process it becomes a moving evocation of the muck-spattered realities of modern farm life … In a way, the real memorial for Tricia is the compassionate and beadily observed account of the Lancashire landscape … That she resolves to write and “leave behind a lifetime of silence” can only be our gain, and dour rural taciturnity’s loss’ Richard Benson, Observer
‘Something else is on these pages: frustration and anger – with Tricia, with herself and with other relatives – that if only the family tradition of silence and the suppression of feelings had been challenged earlier things might have been different. In analysing the inherited values and habits of a lifetime, Simpson breaks the silence and liberates herself’ James Robertson, author of And the Land Lay Still
‘Catherine Simpson’s second book, carries a subtitle – “The Story of a Farming Family who Never Spoke.” Don’t be fooled. This book’s secret weapon is the remarkable voice that fires from the page to the heart with no hesitation at all. Just Wonderful. ’ Janice Galloway, author of The Trick is to Keep Breathing
‘There are moments here of heart-stopping poignancy and unbearable sadness, but it is never maudlin or sentimental. A deeply engaging, courageous and human work’ Graeme Macrae Burnet, His Bloody Project