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Loading... Identical Strangers: A Memoir of Twins Separated and Reunitedby Elyse Schein
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. A unique memoir, almost a "split screen" effect to an unusual and compelling story. jessicahandler | May 11, 2009 |   The book is about the emotions and adjustments made by a pair of identical twins adopted separately when they are reunited. Ultimately, we learn that nature is responsible for the strangest things - gestures and field of career among them - but that identical twins are completely different in personality and that they themselves seek to find similarities even when they deny it.I was good friends with an identical twin at one time. I didn't know she was a twin and it did cause some friction when the girl I went to lunch with Monday to Friday would do no more than nod her head to me at the weekend. My friend had pinched her twin's boyfriend, had a baby and married him. They separated within months and he went to back to live with the twin who was his original girlfriend. The twin got pregnant and both girls gave birth within three months of each other. The father went back to his wife. The twins saw each other only when they were dropping off or picking up their children from their mother who babysat them during working hours but were otherwise scarcely on speaking terms (as you might imagine).Having the same father, the twins are half-sisters, having sisters for mothers, they are first cousins, but since the mothers DNA was 100% alike they are also, genetically, full sisters. The irony is that the little girls look almost exactly alike and one wonders if they are doomed to repeat their mothers' awful rivalry.The twins in the book, who are both Goodreads authors, think they are more alike than they actually are. As with two artists fulfilling the same commission with the same clay, the resulting statue will show the different vision of each. We are too complex for it to be otherwise. (  )Savondujour | Jan 30, 2009 | Elyse Shein and Paula Bernstein had always known they were adopted, but it was not until they were in their mid-30s that they knew they were twins. This engrossing book chronicles their discovery of each other and their quest to learn more about the circumstances of their adoption and the identity of their birth mother. The sisters’ differences, more than their similarities, were what made this book particularly interesting to me. Their similarities, such as the fact that they both studied film, are merely uncanny, the kind of thing you alway hear about in stories of reunited twins. But it is their sometimes dramatic differences in attitude give their story extra layers, speaking not just to their different backgrounds, but also to how all people react to their circumstances. Schein feels robbed of an important relationship and immediately attaches to her new-found twin, but Bernstein is less certain of how she feels about their situation and what she wants now. Had this been written by one sister, it would have felt unbalanced, and an outsider might have been too quick to impose his or own opinions on the story, looking for patterns that may or may not be significant. With each sister sharing her own thoughts and interpretations, we get both balance and immediacy, which make this an engaging read. See my complete review at my blog. (  )teresakayep | Jan 10, 2009 | Interesting....fascinating really. A bit whiny at times....for all of their claims to be so similar...I liked one sister alot more than the other! (  )twryan72 | Sep 7, 2008 | allykat | Jul 4, 2008 | 0.043 seconds to build listing  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0812975650, Paperback)Elyse Schein had always known she was adopted, but it wasn’t until her mid-thirties while living in Paris that she searched for her biological mother. What she found instead was shocking: She had an identical twin sister. What’s more, after being separated as infants, she and her sister had been, for a time, part of a secret study on separated twins.Paula Bernstein, a married writer and mother living in New York, also knew she was adopted, but had no inclination to find her birth mother. When she answered a call from her adoption agency one spring afternoon, Paula’s life suddenly divided into two starkly different periods: the time before and the time after she learned the truth. As they reunite, taking their tentative first steps from strangers to sisters, Paula and Elyse are left with haunting questions surrounding their origins and their separation. And when they investigate their birth mother’s past, the sisters move closer toward solving the puzzle of their lives. Praise for Identical Strangers: Winner of a Books for a Better Life Award “Remarkable . . . powerful . . . [an] extraordinary experience . . . The reader is left to marvel at the reworking of individual identities required by one discovery and then another.” –Boston Sunday Globe “[A] poignant memoir of twin sisters who were split up as infants, became part of a secret scientific study, then found each other as adults.” –Reader’s Digest (Editors’ Choice) “[A] fascinating memoir . . . Weaving studies about twin science into their personal reflections . . . Schein and Bernstein provide an intelligent exploration of how identity intersects with bloodlines. A must-read for anyone interested in what it means to be a family.” –Bust “Identical Strangers has all the heart-stopping drama you’d expect. But it has so much more–the authors’ emotional honesty and clear-eyed insights turn this unique story into a universal one. As you accompany the twins on their search for the truth of their birth, you witness another kind of birth–the germination and flowering of sisterly love.” –Deborah Tannen, author of You’re Wearing That? (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:00 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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