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BROTHERS

MY SEVEN-YEAR-OLD son, normally the cheeriest of souls, lost it one evening last week. It came as a shock when he transfigured in seconds from a boy scampering merrily around a sports field to an abject tear-stained wretch, wailing: ‘Nobody understands me!’

The provocation had, of course, been a throwaway putdown by his nine-year-old brother — usually his best friend. Older brothers, eh? I have two and, even now, no one can wind me up faster.

On a recent trip with my parents and oldest brother, I found myself shouting at him to ‘stop being so bossy’. It was comically revealing about family fault lines.

There is a fascinating exploration of brother-sister loyalty in Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire, recent winner of the Women’s Prize For Fiction. This fast-paced literary novel is a clever, contemporary reimagining of Sophocles’ Antigone for our age of anxiety.

Isma and Aneeka are British Muslim sisters, stained by their brother Parvaiz’s disappearance on jihad. When Eammon, the son of Britain’s first Muslim Conservative Home Secretary, becomes besotted with Aneeka, at first she encourages him, hoping that it might somehow help her brother. But the fallout, for everyone, is devastating.

The most uncomplicated, loving relationship depicted in Kate Atkinson’s popular prize-winner Life After Life is between the novel’s protagonist, Ursula, and her younger brother Teddy.

It’s a dazzlingly clever novel that explores myriad possible lives for its heroine — and for Teddy. So, in one timeline, Ursula dies in the Spanish Flu pandemic; in another, she attempts to assassinate Hitler.

And Teddy is the star of his own story in Atkinson’s companion novel A God In Ruins.

Meanwhile, hot-headed Scout and the older, more mature Jem Finch in Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird are a classic sisterbrother team.

When you feel the world is against you, brothers-in-arms (or, indeed, sisters) can be steadfast allies.