Word: twins
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...should make a disclosure before I review Audrey Niffenegger's new novel, which is that I'm an identical twin. I didn't have anything to disclose with her previous novel, The Time Traveler's Wife, because even after numerous attempts I have not yet successfully traveled in time. But Her Fearful Symmetry (Scribner; 406 pages) is about a pair of identical twins, Julia and Valentina, whose mother and aunt, Edwina and Elspeth, are also identical twins...
Novelists love twins--evil twins, vanishing twins, incestuous twins, conjoined twins, spooky dead-little-girl twins. We make handy symbols for any writer who feels inclined to muse on the nature of human identity, which is basically every writer ever. But twins aren't symbols; they're people. There are not, to my knowledge, any great identical-twin novelists (though I think John Barth has a twin sister), and I have never yet read a fictional account of twinness that I found convincing, with one exception: Darin Strauss's excellent Chang and Eng, about Barnum & Bailey's famous Siamese twins...
Niffenegger is not, as far as I can ascertain, a twin, but she is a consummate pro, and she gives it a solid try. Edwina and Elspeth--the mom and the aunt--are estranged from each other, and when Elspeth dies, she leaves her apartment, which overlooks Highgate Cemetery in London, to her twin nieces Julia and Valentina, on the condition that they spend a year living there. Julia and Valentina are 20 years old, ash blond, pretty and skinny. They're bright, aimless, dreamy college dropouts who live at home. They don't have jobs. They're virgins...
Fryhofer’s twin brother George, a walk-on to the Varsity lightweight crew team that discovered Harvard on one of his sister’s early recruiting visits, notes her athletic prowess...
George approves of his twin sister’s decision...