You can’t choose whether or not to have siblings. Many children would change their situation, if they could. Some long for company, others are bent on ridding themselves of rivals. But the connection is often the most enduring of all social relationships. Friends, lovers and spouses come and go. Parents die: children arrive when we’re adults, if at all. But siblings can never be divorced, and even estranged, they are seldom forgotten. Not only do they share our genes, they are woven into our earliest memories. Loving, tiresome, indifferent or disapproving, they represent our past.

LRB 26 April 2012 | PDF Download