Tag Archives: twins

#BookReview ‘Beside Myself’ by @A_B_Morgan #mystery #identity

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Beside Myself by Ann Morgan is a novel about identity, about identical twin sisters. Do you recognise what is fake and what is true? One sister is prettier and cleverer than the other, and she is unkind to her twin who seems downtrodden, bullied, teased and not so bright. Then a childhood prank goes wrong which affects the two girls for the rest of their lives. Ann Morgan Helen and Ellie play a cruel trick on a neighbour, they swap clothes and re-do their hairstyles appropriately (Helen wears a plait, Ellie is in bunches) and act like the other one does – Helen assertive, Ellie cowering. It is Helen’s idea, but when it is time to swap back Ellie refuses. Beside Myself is thoughtful, at times creepy and disturbing.
The story is told from Ellie’s point of view, that is Ellie who used to be Helen:-
Hellie – Ellie who became Helen – is now a TV presenter.
Helen – who is now Smudge/Ellie – is struggling with mental health problems.
Confused, I was a little.
After the switch, both girls seem to be accepted without question by friends and family, despite their obvious personality differences. Their mother has met a new man and is not taking much notice of what her daughters do. Even so, the mother’s blindness is a little hard to believe. There is a soggy section in the middle of the book with stream-of-consciousness rambles which I could have done without. I also admit at times to pausing and double-checking which girl I was reading about.
Without giving away the conclusion, it is pertinent to say there is a dramatic turning point which makes the girls revisit their childhood, the swap, and other family memories; and so as adults they make sense of who they are today. Many things are explained and, though I didn’t find either girl particularly likeable, they are much more alike than either appreciate.
This is a psychological portrait of sisters, identity and mental illness, rather than a thriller so don’t expect dramatic action.
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If you like this, try:-
‘The Last Days of Rabbit Hayes’ by Anna McPartlin
‘All My Puny Sorrows’ by Miriam Toews
‘Wolf Winter’ by Cecilia Ekback

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#BookReview ‘The Lightning Tree’ by Emily Woof #contemporary

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The Lightning Tree by Emily Woof is the twin story of Ursula and Jerry. Emily WoofUrsula grows up in a house of mirrors and though she tries to avoid looking at her reflection, she cannot. So it is apt that she is the chameleon of this story, changing her appearance, her style, her clothing, so that as the years pass she seems a different person.
Ursula lives in Jesmond, a nicer area of Newcastle, and through her childhood she passes close to Jerry, who grows up in a flat at the rougher Byker Wall. When they do meet, there is a connection. Their lives run in parallel, twisting and turning, sometimes together, other times far apart.
It is a love story, and an un-love story. How it is to fall in love as an adolescent and then see that love challenged into maturity, changing priorities, changing values, changing circumstances. Jerry, his nose always in a book, goes to Oxford and seems destined for politics. Ursula, less academic, goes to India where she undergoes something of a ‘Marabar Caves’ experience which is not really explained and which I still didn’t understand at the end of the book.
Interwoven with Ursula and Jerry’s stories is that of Ursula’s Ganny Mary, her rural Lancashire upbringing, and how her life was affected by the death of her father and the change in her mother Annie who had her own ‘Marabar Caves’ experience, up Pendle Hill in Lancashire.
There’s no doubting the energy in this book, but I did find the storyline confusing, there are so many surplus characters who we never really engage with, and Ganny Mary never ages. It is an enigmatic book, but one which I struggled to really grasp.

If you like this, try:-
‘Himself’ by Jess Kidd
‘Foxlowe’ by Eleanor Wasserberg
‘The Lost Girl’ by Sandu Manganna

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE LIGHTNING TREE by Emily Woof via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1wL