Seeing Double
The Memory Keeper’s Daughter Kim Edwards
It’s the mid-sixties and, during a freak Kentucky snowstorm, Norah Henry goes into labour. Her doctor husband delivers the healthy baby boy with the aid of a nurse, Caroline Gill. But there’s another little life following quickly behind him, a girl with Down’s syndrome. Dr David Henry tells his wife that she was stillborn and then instructs Caroline to take the baby to a mental institution. Instead, Caroline escapes with the baby and raises her as her own. The two twins grow up, not knowing of the other’s existence, until one night in a blizzard, numerous lives are turned upside down.
The Girls
Lori Lansens
Rose and Ruby Darlen are conjoined twins who narrate their own story of what it’s like to quite literally grow up, together. Joined at their heads, Rose carries her smaller sister Ruby around on her hip. Set in a small town in Ontario, Canada, the Darlen twins give us a rare glimpse into their lives. Learning about how the two young women cope with the ordinary, while being very much an extraordinary pair makes for an amazing read.
In August we celebrate twinning. We’re not talking Swanage with Rudesheim…more Arnie and Danny De Vito. It’s Twins Festival Day on the fourth and we’ve managed to find some fantastic books that feature not one, but two great protagonists.
I know This Much is True
buffoons and a girl pretending she’s a boy.
In an act of protest over war in the Middle East, paranoid schizophrenic Thomas Birdsey cuts off his hand in a public library. As Thomas decides not to reattach his hand, his twin brother, Dominick decides to help him escape the confines of his mental institution. The novel draws emotional parallels between the lives of the two twins and the internal struggles of the one ‘normal’ twin who certainly has more than his fair share of demons to contend with.
Her Fearful Symmetry
Wally Lamb
Twelfth Night
William Shakespeare
It all begins with a shipwreck and Viola, having been washed up on the coastline of Illyria, believes that her twin brother Sebastian is lost to the tempestuous sea. Viola is rescued by a sea captain, disguises herself as a young man (as you do) and starts working for the Duke, Orsino who thinks he’s in love with Olivia. Viola acts as a gobetween to convey the Duke’s love for Olivia, who herself promptly falls in love with the disguised Viola. Meanwhile, Viola falls in love with Orsino. Confused? You should be. It has everything we’ve come to know and love about the Bard: mistaken identity, unrequited love,
48
Audrey Niffenegger
Identical twins Julie and Valentina live in America but have just inherited a flat near Highgate Cemetery from their mum’s estranged twin sister, Elspeth. In fact, that’s the one stipulation of the will: that their mother is never allowed to cross the threshold of the apartment. The rift has never been explained and the girls are keen to find out why. It’s a strange and intriguing tale centring round not one but two sets of slightly ethereal twins.
Identical
Elen Hopkins
Standing out when you’re an identical twin is never going to be easy. 16 year olds Kaeleigh and Raeanne are both desperate for their parents’ attention but their father is a District Court Judge and mother’s running for Congress. So they both play their separate roles: one’s a goody two-shoes and the other’s a real rebel, hell-bent on self-destruction. Daddy’s little girls are growing up a little twisted and these two very different halves are both trying to work out how to be whole again….but not in a saccharine Atomic Kitten-type way.