As Nadine Gordimer once mused, ‘Writing is making sense of life. You work your whole life and perhaps you’ve made sense of one small area.’ Sheila Kohler’s site of personal haunting is the murder of her sister Maxine in South Africa more than three decades ago. Once We Were Sisters is not, however, a maudlin memoir. Whilst the book readily enters dark territory, it also resuscitates the writer’s adored older sibling and their interwoven lives with a golden patina of nostalgia.