A remarkable and compelling story about conjoined twins Rose and Ruby Darlen. You won’t be able to put it down!
Growing up with a sister can be fractious at the best of times. She’s likely to be the bane of your life, stealing everything from your favourite red lipstick to your latest crush, and yet you know she’ll always be there and wouldn’t want it any other way. But what if she was literally there all the time – for every meal, every sneeze, every breath? For the eponymous ‘Girls’ in Lori Lansen’s latest novel, that’s exactly what life is like since Rose and Ruby Darlen are conjoined twins: they have separate bodies and separate minds but a patch of their skulls is fused so that while they walk as one, they can only see each other’s faces through carefully angled mirrors.
Lansen’s portrait of the girls is so vivid, the characters practically leap off the page. The book is effectively an autobiography, told predominantly by Rose, the bookish sister, with sporadic interjections from Ruby, the so-called “pretty” one. As their thirtieth birthday approaches, the girls are set to become the oldest living craniopagus twins, but the detection of a brain tumour confirms time is running out and Rose is determined to record their history for future generations, including the daughter she’s never seen or held.
And what a history it is. Life for the Darlen twins is naturally fairly extraordinary by anyone’s book and yet, what makes this story so special is that the voices we hear and the thoughts they share are often distinctly ordinary; so much so, that the reading experience progresses from the awkward fascination that comes with watching reality TV to a far more personal affair, which makes putting the book down akin to cutting short good chats with a friend.
Born in small-town Canada to an unwedded 18-year-old on the eve of a major tornado, the twins’ lives begin as they mean to go on. Abandoned by their mother on the very same day, Rose and Ruby are promptly rescued from a life of medical intrigue by a middle-aged nurse and her Slovakian husband. Unlikely parents in many respects, Aunt Lovey and Uncle Stash, and their haven farm dwelling, are everything to the girls. But when life deals yet another blow they must learn how to cope alone; and cope they do: living alone, making friends, holding down separate jobs and pursuing different interests. Rose is creatively-minded and loves visiting the zoo, while Ruby (a terrible traveller) is not particularly academic and prefers to gather ancient artefacts on the farm.
Lansen’s novel is a masterpiece in characterisation; no words are wasted, and yet the conversational tone is captured brilliantly and with great ease. It’s little wonder Amanda Holden fell in love with it during Richard & Judy’s Summer Reads last year, or that the pair nominated it in the recent British Book Awards (sadly it lost out to Jed Rubenfeld’s The Interpretation of Murder). The Girls are remarkable, simply for being, but this book brings to life a world that goes far beyond the confines of craniopagy and a story so compelling you’ll be sad to leave it behind.
The Girls by Lori Lansen is published by Random House.
