Nonfiction Book Reviews

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.

China Ghosts: My Daughter’s Journey to America, My Passage to Fatherhood by Jeff Gammage was an excellent autobiography. I’ve read a string of less-than-stellar autobiographies lately (ie Hope’s Boy, Shattered Dreams, Enter the Past Tense) and I was ready for a great one. I found that in China Ghosts.

Jeff Gammage is a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, and I think that had a LOT to do with how much I enjoyed the book - a newspaper reporter has to learn early on to weave a deft and interesting tale without using too much over-the-top descriptions, and that writing experience shows in his writing of this book. I’m starting to realize that I can put up with almost anything but a poor writing style: Typos, missing information that I think is important, and even swearing doesn’t bother me like bad writing does. Luckily, China Ghosts is very well written.

He spares no quarter for himself; he talks about how he never had any desire to have children, because he was self-centered and if there was another person in the equation, then that would mean his family and wife would pay attention to someone else other than himself - the horrors! He didn’t want that, and thus, he would’ve been happy if he and his wife stayed childless. Or so he thought.

But his wife was born with a nurturing instinct, and she wanted children, so Jeff said yes to make his wife happy. They tried for several years to have children, but eventually it was declared that they were infertile. My heart broke for them at this point - that’s actually something that my husband and I are struggling with. We have been trying for 4 years to get pregnant, and thus far, nothing has happened. It’s a very tough row to hoe. (If that’s something you also struggle with, make sure to check out the Infertility blog here at Today - it’s a great blog for infertility information).

Anyway, back to Jeff Gammage: He and his wife finally decide to go the adoption route, and for reasons he explains in detail in the book, they decide to adopt from China. He jumps back and forth in time, keeping your interest high, wondering what will happen next. This is not just a book about adopting a toddler, but of becoming a father, an especially difficult task for him since he had no previous experience with children. His transformation is astounding, and you realize that a parent’s love is truly boundless. When they finally pick their new daughter up, he falls head over heels in love with her, which was so sweet to see. It was beautifully written and by the end, I too had fallen in love with his daughter. She’s a cute little girl, and I loved watching her “grow up” (the book ends when she’s 6 years old).

He spends time explaining the background on different cities in China, and since that wasn’t as interesting to me, I simply skimmed those parts. I think that could have easily been left out of the book, but it wasn’t a huge deal. Even with that in there, it was a quick read (I finished it one day - I had a hard time putting it down!) and I’m hoping to someday read a “sequel” by his two daughters (he eventually adopts a second daughter from China). That would just be so fun for me.

I give it 4.5 out of 5 stars. And don’t forget - with the Chinese Olympics coming up quickly, it might be a good read for anyone interested in learning more about China. Oh, and if you’re thinking about adopting a girl from China, I would rate this book as an absolute must read - it had so much interesting and helpful information in there about the whole process. Two thumbs up!

Havs

Hope’s Boy by Andrew Bridge was an autobiography that I really wanted to love.  The story is nothing short of a miracle: Andrew was a child raised by a mentally unstable mother (Hope) who locked him in a closet and fed him cat food, yet showered him with love.  She truly loved him, even though she couldn’t take of him physically.  The state eventually took him out of her care, and he ended up in the foster care system in California.

He spent a month in the MacLaren Hall, the Los Angeles County’s facility for foster children, and then was placed with a family who he ended up spending the rest of his childhood with.  On emancipation at age 18, he was still with that same family, which is unheard of as a regular foster child, but the family never made any move to adopt him, and he never wanted them to.  The family never treated him as one of their own, and the mother handled him very roughly at some points, although as he got older, that seemed to stop (or he at least stopped talking about it).

He eventually ends up going to college, graduates from Harvard Law School and becomes a lawyer - not a “normal” route for a foster care child, where roughly only 3% of foster care children even go to college.

As a survival mechanism, Andrew Bridge was a very withdrawn, shy child who didn’t interact with others very much, and never developed a loving bond with any of his classmates, his foster family, or really anyone at all.  His mother was in a mental institution for years, and he had virtually no contact with her for the 11 years that he was in foster care.  His grandmother tried to contact him, but because of extreme poverty, wasn’t able to very often.

Although that barrier between him and the rest of the world was one of the reasons that he survived and did as well as he did (because he never depended on others to do anything for him - he had to be independent) it also made the book into a difficult read, at least for me.  I never felt as if I truly related to him and what was going on with him - I felt as if there was a wall between me and him, and I never felt personally connected to the story.  I almost didn’t finish the book; it was a struggle to get it done.

The other problem for me was the style of writing.  I have never really liked poetry, and his style of writing would rightly be described as “poetic.”  Here’s a very brief excerpt as an example:

“As always, she had made the twin bed that morning, and now in the evening shadow, the tucked bedcover rested smooth as ink.  I flopped down, my legs hanging at the side, my ears and nose still cold from the trek across the street.  Tired, my mind emptied slowly into the raven night of the room’s deepening corners.” Page 28, “Hope’s Boy”

If that appealed to you, then you’ll love this book, because the entire book is filled with phrases like that.  To me, it was just a bit over the top.  That’s a personal preference, and I hesitate to even mention it, except it was something that bothered me throughout the book.

Overall, it was just too depressing (there never is a feel good moment in the whole book) and I never felt as if I truly got to know him, so despite my want to love it, I ended up simply liking it okay.  I’m surprised it was a New York Times Bestseller - I wouldn’t have pegged it to do that well, myself.  Did I completely miss the boat here?  Anyone else read it and want to tell me what they thought?  Leave your comments below - I want to hear from you!

3.75 out of 5 stars

Havs