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Sep. 27th, 2010 12:18 pm Identical Strangers: A Memoir of Twins Separated and Reunited, Elyse Schein and Paula Bernstein
I don't know about you, but when I was growing up I desperately wanted to be an identical twin. So special! So...well, "unique" isn't the right word, but you know what I mean. So attention-getting. I knew some non-identical twins and that always seemed like the worst of both worlds - you have a sibling, but they don't look like you so you can't fool people or freak them out, and what if you're not the pretty one? (Ashton Kutcher has a twin brother who not only looks nothing like him, he's unusually unattractive.) When I got to know some twins well, I was impressed by their apparent mind-meld and ability to communicate with each other in shorthand. Who wouldn't want that?
So imagine finding out in your thirties that you had an identical twin but you were adopted by different families because some psychologist thought it was more healthy. That's what happened to the authors of this book, when one of them started researching her birth mother. They found out that they'd been part of a study to determine if mental illness was hereditary or environmental, because they were identical twin daughters of a schizophrenic woman.
One of them's a bourgeois stay at home mother in Park Slope, the other lives in Paris in a tiny apartment and supports her dreams of working in film by tutoring English students. What a wild duet! But like a lot of twins raised separately, they eerily have things in common: they're both interested in film and both have written about it, both were the editor of their school newspaper, both suffer from depression, etc.
The most interesting part of the story for me was how they built their relationship with each other. They start out thrilled that they've found each other and are instantly madly in love. They introduce each other to their families and know they'll be in each other's lives forever. After a while, each of them starts resenting the other - how weird it is to see the other's overly dramatic expressions on their own face, the pressure of having this new intense relationship. Despite their joy at being reunited, each of them had a settled life before this intimate stranger entered it. I can't help wondering if the Parisian twin, who's constantly house-sitting in order to get out of her small apartment, and borrowing from friends, tried to get the Park Slope sister to give her money and a place to live when she came to the US.
It's a quick but fun read about a situation the rest of us can only imagine. I'm glad they either had a good ghost writer or were skillful enough to tell their story well.
I don't know about you, but when I was growing up I desperately wanted to be an identical twin. So special! So...well, "unique" isn't the right word, but you know what I mean. So attention-getting. I knew some non-identical twins and that always seemed like the worst of both worlds - you have a sibling, but they don't look like you so you can't fool people or freak them out, and what if you're not the pretty one? (Ashton Kutcher has a twin brother who not only looks nothing like him, he's unusually unattractive.) When I got to know some twins well, I was impressed by their apparent mind-meld and ability to communicate with each other in shorthand. Who wouldn't want that?
So imagine finding out in your thirties that you had an identical twin but you were adopted by different families because some psychologist thought it was more healthy. That's what happened to the authors of this book, when one of them started researching her birth mother. They found out that they'd been part of a study to determine if mental illness was hereditary or environmental, because they were identical twin daughters of a schizophrenic woman.
One of them's a bourgeois stay at home mother in Park Slope, the other lives in Paris in a tiny apartment and supports her dreams of working in film by tutoring English students. What a wild duet! But like a lot of twins raised separately, they eerily have things in common: they're both interested in film and both have written about it, both were the editor of their school newspaper, both suffer from depression, etc.
The most interesting part of the story for me was how they built their relationship with each other. They start out thrilled that they've found each other and are instantly madly in love. They introduce each other to their families and know they'll be in each other's lives forever. After a while, each of them starts resenting the other - how weird it is to see the other's overly dramatic expressions on their own face, the pressure of having this new intense relationship. Despite their joy at being reunited, each of them had a settled life before this intimate stranger entered it. I can't help wondering if the Parisian twin, who's constantly house-sitting in order to get out of her small apartment, and borrowing from friends, tried to get the Park Slope sister to give her money and a place to live when she came to the US.
It's a quick but fun read about a situation the rest of us can only imagine. I'm glad they either had a good ghost writer or were skillful enough to tell their story well.
