BITTERSWEET is the story of four interesting sisters, two sets of identical twins, living in Australia in the 1920's and 1930's. The Latimer sisters are the daughters of a rector and a selfish, nasty mother from whom they cannot wait to get away. The rector recognizes the destructive influence of his wife on their daughters, so he arranges for them to attend nursing school at the local hospital. Thus, they begin their lives as independent, hard-working women.

One of the interesting themes of BITTERSWEET is the subservience of women to men. The sisters are working as registered nurses after they have studied valuable medical techniques and as a result are able to support themselves with worthwhile careers. Two of the four sisters decide they do not want to marry because, as married women, they would have to give up their nursing jobs and would not own any money or property independent of their husbands. The other two sisters, however, do marry and the results are not happy unions.

When I first started reading BITTERSWEET, I thought that I would have a hard time keeping the characters straight since there are four sisters involved in the story. However, the personalities of the sisters are well- developed by Colleen McCullough and each woman is depicted as a unique and strong female. The character of Kitty was particularly interesting because, although she is drop dead gorgeous, she has a "salty" wit and does not mince words.

There are very detailed descriptions of Australian politics and the Depression economy in the early 20th century, but the author's writing style makes the prose of the book easy to read. Even though each sister has a struggle to overcome, at the end they all end up in a good place that is truly bittersweet. Overall, BITTERSWEET tells the story of four very interesting and different sisters and I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys strong female heroines.