Browsing the Bookshelves

The Girls by Lori Lansens

This is, as Arthur Golden says on the front cover, a remarkable book.  Remarkable because it is the utterly engrossing story of two extraordinary conjoined twins. They are not extraordinary because they are conjoined – although that in itself is remarkable enough – but because they are such warm, lively and sympathetic characters. Lansens device of distinguishing between the voices of Rose and Ruby works very well, so well in fact that the different type face employed for each sister really isn’t necessary: they are so clearly each their own person.

Rose and Ruby, born in the midst of a tornado, are abandoned by their natural mother and taken in by the nurse, Aunt Lovey, who delivered them. (I want an Aunt Lovey of my own please.)  Aunt Lovey is married to Stash, a Slovak immigrant to the United States: his history and distinct cultural identity give the novel a greater scope than is often found in popular fiction and Larsen’s makes good use of it.

There’s no denying I enjoyed reading The Girls.  Despite the sometimes disturbing subject matter and a continually growing foreboding of untimely death, there is little hint of darkness, and Larsens navigates the reader through the ups and downs of Rose and Ruby’s childhood with such skill and warmth, that it becomes a celebration of life rather than a tale of illness and death.  Yet, put the book down for a moment or close the pages for the final time, and there seems to be something a little thin, a little hollow, about the whole. A missed opportunity, perhaps? Or a sense that there really could have been so much more. Or perhaps it’s just a general sadness that there’s no going back to meet two such wonderful people again.  I doubt that this is a ‘great’ book, as some reviewers have claimed, but it is touching and tender, and good: a novel that will linger in the mind for a long time.