Grace, Tamar and Laszlo the Beautiful is a powerful examination of sisterhood examined through a set of short, short stories with a persistent sinister undertone. The winner of Wales Book of the Year 2009, Deborah Kay Davies writes unflinchingly about the enmity and ultimately, the common bond that forever links Grace and Tamar.

Growing up in one of the South Wales valleys with a dysfunctional mother who transfers her affections like a change in the direction of the wind, Grace and Tamar learn to fend for themselves. Tamar is independent, introspective, and seemingly indifferent to her sister's cruel treatment. Grace seems wicked, impetuous and spoilt. There are moments where I gasped at the horrible things that the sisters do to each other, for example when Grace pushes Tamar out of a tree, transforming the innocent adventures of sisters into a cold and ugly moment:

My sister looked perfectly at home. Her chin was clotted with green saliva, the flesh underneath her eyes shining with sweat. I lunged forward and pushed her hard off the tree. I sat and gripped the trunk, listening to her body crash and thump down through the branches.

Deborah Kay Davies' prose is sparse yet vivid, evoking the sense of wonder of a childhood of discovery and adventure, time suspended. One day, Tamar wanders off in the woods:

She stops to watch a huge black and amber butterfly open and close its wings as it rests on a drooping foxglove spear. It looks like a velvet brooch pinned there. No one seems to be awake for miles around.

The undercurrent of cruelty and abuse and the absence of love in the family runs through each short story. As Grace and Tamar grow up, leading independent lives, they are haunted by their upbringing. By the end of the book, Grace and Tamar have accepted they can never eradicate the ties between them, the connection is indestructible, no matter how much they might have wanted to destroy it.

Undeniably one of the most important relationships in a woman's life, the relationship between sisters can be akin to that of best friends but can also be destructive and spiteful. The depiction of sisters in fiction has ranged from the perfectly content and idyllic devotion between Jane and Lizzie Bennet in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice to the enforced separation examined in Liza Cody's Bucket Nut.

Each excellent, caustic story in Grace, Tamar and Laszlo the Beautiful stands alone; in fact some of the stories were prize winners in their own right. Davies subtly tries to shock her readers, juxtaposing the everyday and the compelling or disturbing. Snapshots of incidents from the book are still inhabiting my thoughts; Tamar's attempt to drown Grace, or Grace's bizarre affection for a dog she meets on her loveless honeymoon, or the final image of Grace and Tamar holding hands, crying, realising that their bond cannot be severed.