The Girls: A Novel by Lori Lansens
Booklist Review: Lansen’s remarkable second novel is told from two viewpoints: that of Rose and that of Ruby Darlen, 29-year-old conjoined twins. A recent medical diagnosis has spurred Rose to write her autobiography, and she encourages Ruby to do the same. Between the two sections, the story of their lives is revealed, beginning with their birth to an unwed teen mother and their adoption by Lovey Darlen, the nurse who was with their mother when she was in labor, and her strong, silent husband, Stash.
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2 comments:
There are many "WOWS" in The Girls: it's amazingly and beautifully written. There are so many wonderful and so apt details. It's the kind of writing you'd be checking lines as stand-outs on every page. This book has a great storyline: new incidents: victories and tragedies, large and small, pop up at just the right moment. There is no time to be bored in this book. The characters have depth, quirkiness--they're real--and often I was forgetting that the twins were conjoined. Not sure if it is this year's book but I highly recommend it.
There are so many things about this book that I loved – the beautiful descriptions and imagery -“In dreams, we knew the moon.”; both girls’ humor and their unfailing love for each other. I think haunting is a work to describe this novel – the reader grows to love the individual characters, and then when you think about their living situation as conjoined twins and all the difficulties that would entail, it turns your head around.
I loved that they work in a library, grew up on a farm, that Ruby collects Indian artifacts and that Rose is a writer. I love that the story is told chronologically and in the two voices – we grow with the girls and get to know both equally as well. But it is quirky and I wonder if the strangeness of the characters’ lives would be off-putting to many of the RARI readers?
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