Small World

A year after her divorce, Joyce has settled into single life in Cambridge. She works archiving other people's family photos and videos, and she has a private habit of reading posts on the neighborhood networking site Small World, looking for answers to life's easiest problems.

Then her older sister, Lydia, also divorced, announces she is leaving Los Angeles after almost thirty years and returning east. Joyce offers her the spare room in her apartment. It is meant to be temporary, just until Lydia finds her own place.

Living together goes badly. Joyce had hoped for the closeness she has always wanted with Lydia, but the two drift into friction instead, and new neighbors upstairs make the apartment no calmer. They almost never speak about Eleanor, their younger sister, who was severely disabled and died at ten.

When fresh details about the family's past surface, the sisters face a choice: let the secrets push them further apart, or use them to reset how they relate. The novel is a domestic story told with dry humor and a gentle touch.