Jan 17 2009
“Identical Strangers” by Elyse Schein and Paula Bernstein
I picked up Identical Strangers: A Memoir of Twins Separated and Reunited by Elyse Schein and Paula Bernstein because the title caught my eye. Identical strangers? Wow - talk about a mind-bending idea! How would it be to have a twin somewhere in the world but never know it growing up, and only finding out the truth as an adult? And when those twins first find out the truth, how do they deal with it? And (question of the century!) why on earth would the twins be separated in the first place?
As you can tell, I was quite intrigued by the premise of the story, and I started reading it with high interest. It was a lot like my reasoning behind picking up Mistaken Identity: Two Families, One Survivor: There’s really not that many people out there who have this kind of thing happen to them in real life. It was a plot worthy of a Hollywood movie.
I’m sad to say my interest soon waned, and I ended the book feeling “ehh” about it. Yes, you heard me - ehh. It’s the technical term for “so-so/blah/or otherwise not inspired.” Now you know.
First, a bit of background on what happened:
Elyse and Paula were identical twins born to a mental health patient who was not married and could not take care of her children. She gave the children up for adoption, but unbeknownst to her, the Jewish adoption agency, Louise Wise Services, had agreed to be part of a scientific study being conducted on twins.
The scientists had a goal in mind: They wanted to settle, once and for all, the debate between nature and nurture. They decided that if they took identical twins and split them at birth, then they could watch them grow up and see how they turn out. Would they still be similar, despite the different environments? Or would they be molded by their families and show that nurture really does triumph over nature?
The book goes through chronologically, starting with how Elyse first found out that she had a twin sister, to contacting Paula, to meeting each other for the first time, and on to developing a relationship with each other. The book switches back and forth between the two, first one talking exclusively in first person and relating an event, and then switching to the other twin who was also talking in first person and (usually) relating the same event you just finished reading about.
This style of writing allows you to “see” inside of each person’s head which gave me a feeling of immediacy, as if I was really living through all of this. Unfortunately, with the repeating of information again and again, it got to be boring and repetitious. (In reality, life is boring enough the first time around - almost no one except apparently Britney Spears has an interesting enough life that it bears being repeated again and again. Paula and Elyse are not exceptions to this rule.)
Also, they spent much of the book upset about being a part of the study done, and working to uncover what the study was for, who was doing it, etc. Although I understood their need to know this information, it honestly wasn’t that interesting to me. Just because I knew they cared didn’t mean that I did.
Along with trying to find out information about the study, Elyse and Paula also spent much of their time looking for their mother. That is what actually got me to the end of the book - would they find her? Would she welcome them into her life, or say ‘No way, you’re part of my past’? I won’t ruin the ending for anyone who picks the book up, so I won’t say what happens there, but I will say that that question was really the only thing that kept me reading.
It was a very honest and real book - the twins spend quite a bit of time talking about each other and their innermost thoughts that most people wouldn’t tell the world. They didn’t always get along after they met, and they are genuine enough in the telling of their story to repeat all that happened. I give them kudos for being truthful in their memoir.
But in the end, I guess I just felt like it was a book that could have been helped with some editing work. I didn’t need to hear the same conversation repeated, this time just from another point of view. Also, I had a hard time keeping the twins straight in the beginning (now which was which?) and so when the story would jump from one head to the other, sometimes it just plain lost me all together.
I think this would be an especially interesting read for anyone who was adopted, or was a twin (or, even better, both).
If you are a gigantic fan of memoirs everywhere, then you’d probably want to pick this one up, if only for the unique idea behind it. But for the rest of the world, I’d probably recommend to just skip Identical Strangers.
Although there was plenty of interesting information in it (like some of the stories they dug up about other twins who had been separated and reunited - there are some doozies out there!) there was just enough uninteresting information and repeated “stuff” to make me yawn one too many times.
I give Identical Strangers 3.75 out of 5 stars.
Hava
PS If you are interested in memoirs about adoption, make sure to check out my review of China Ghosts by Jeff Gammage. That is a beautifully told story of international adoption, and its impact on a family.
I presume this is a real life thing? They could have jazzed it up a bit by adding some artistic license
Apparently, this ’splitting’ of twins is more common than you probably think. I’d guess it’s something to do with not being able to take care of two children, financially, so the family would give the child to another, more wealthy family.
Interesting. As a sometime sociologist, I’d lean towards the ‘nurture’ side of things though I’m sure that because of the shared genes there’s an element of ‘nature’ in there as well.
Redditted and Sitehopped. Unfortunately could not Stumble because I have reached by IP limit for Today.com blogs
I have always been fascinated by multiple personality disorder and read several books about it growing up, some of them quite famous. I discovered, as interesting (and debilitating) as they condition is and as tragic as the causes behind it, the way it was written made a huge difference on my interest in the book.
It’s not enough to have an interesting story. Slight changes in style made a huge difference.
(By the way, if you’re interested, far and away the best in these type books I read was When Rabbit Howls by Truddi Chase. Others were either too sensationalist or far far too dry (and that includes Three Faces of Eve and Sybil. By a strange coincidence, later in life, I married into a family where my understanding from these books was important.)
Sariah >> The authors really seemed to think that nature played a bigger role in your personalities, but that honestly wasn’t the focus of the book. They were more focused on why this happened to them, and on their relationship with each other, than the results of the study. Also (it’s been a while so don’t quote me on this) but if I remember right, the study was never published, so they had a hard time finding the results.
Hindleyite >> Your comment reminded me of the stories that I’ve read about different people writing memoirs where they took “artistic license” and/or just completely made the darn things up.
I was going to write a post on that at one point - thanks for the reminder. I think I’ll write about that tonight. 
Oh, and thank you for the Reddit love - Reddit rocks!! I have gotten A LOT of traffic from Reddit today because I went through and submitted some of my old posts there. I need to finish that project - it has created a lot of incoming traffic for me, which is awesome.
Stephanie >> That’s what I’ve found too - the story line behind it can be fascinating, but if the writing doesn’t live up to the story line, then you still don’t end up loving the book.
I have been trying to put When Rabbits Howl on hold, but my library’s site doesn’t seem to be working.
I’ll keep trying, because I too have always been interested in that kind of thing. Learning about human psychology is fascinating to me, so thank you for the recommendation. If I can get it, I’ll make sure to review it on here. 
Nicole >> Wow, how cool would that be! I’d love to have you come on board with us. Today is a great place to blog at.
Now, I did want to warn you that things have changed slightly when it comes to pay (I don’t know if you read this already or not, so I apologize in advance if I’m just repeating myself here). Anyway, Today just changed the starting pay for blogs from $1 per post plus $2 per 1,000 unique visitors (the counter for “unique visitors” being reset each night, so if one person visits my blog every day, they’d count as a unique visitor each time) to now just paying $2 per 1,000 unique visitors, period.
Now, Today does review all blogs each month, and if your blog is one of the “outstanding” ones (their phrase, not mine), they will raise your pay, and put you onto the $1 base pay plus $2 per 1000 UV’s. Basically, you’d have to have terrific posts plus quite a bit of traffic in order to be one of those “outstanding” blogs.
Anyway, I just wanted to warn you of those changes, because I didn’t want you signing up with one idea about pay, and then finding out afterwards that it was different. That isn’t fair.
But if you do decide to sign up, then yes, if you could do it through my site, then I do receive credit - after a certain amount of posts written by you (I want to say 30, although I’m not sure of that) Today would give me $5 in my next paycheck. Not a huge amount, but hey, I’ll always take $5.
If you’re interested, then click here and scroll down until you see the link for the sign-up page. If you go through that link, then my blog will get credit for you signing up.
Thanks, and if you have any questions, please ask. I’m always glad to answer anything and everything I can. I really do enjoy working at Today - it’s a pretty great company.
Hava
Hey that’s okay - I kinda figured you meant to put it on the other post, and I thought about moving your comment, but I didn’t want to lose you in case you came back. :-} Here works as well as anywhere anyway.
I hear you on the pay thing - I have had several personal blogs before now, and I didn’t get paid a red cent for any of them because I never put ads on any of them. In fact, I lost money before because I bought the domain names that I blogged at. So yeah, Today’s a much better deal.
LOL!
As long as you post once every 30 days, Today will not kick you out of the system. You’re not likely going to get the payraise to a dollar a post plus $2 per thousand with a posting rate like that, but if you’re cool with just $2 per thousand, then that shouldn’t bother you. You obviously aren’t going to make enough to live off of (duh!) but since that’s not the point anyway…
After you’ve been accepted, make sure to check out the forums at http://today.com/forum/ - you log in using the same username and password that you do to get into your blog. There, you have access to all of the support you could possibly imagine. Those forums are one of the coolest parts about blogging at Today.
Come back when you’ve been accepted so I can check out your new digs, and promote your site on here!
Hava
Callista >> Interesting! I can’t imagine how wild that would be, eh?
Thanks for the suggestion.
Havs