The Girls

I have never read a book like Lori Larsens The Girls. The novel is about a lot of the things that all novels are about: love, friendship, family, relationships. But The Girls is not any old novel, and the narrators are not your usual could-be-anybodies. At the time that they are writing their co-authored autobiography, Ruby and Rose Darlen are almost thirty, sick, and working in a library (The Girls is one of those books within a book…a fiction novel that reads like an autobiography). They are also the world’s oldest surviving craniopagus twins. That means that they are joined at the head, sharing a major vein. They can never be separated, and because of the way they are connected, they have never seen the other’s face except for in mirrors or photographs.

Rose is the academic, and the main writer of the autobiography. She is sporty and bookish at the same time, with a verbose yet poignant way of looking at the world. She weaves in her own story with that of her sister’s, her Aunt Lovey and Uncle Stash—her adoptive parents.

Ruby is interested in history, and a fan of TV. Although Rose often says that Ruby is the weaker of the two, Ruby comes across strong in the chapters that she writes. Although she is clearly not as “writerly” as her sister, her chapters add simplicity to the complex narrative that Rose writes, breaking the novel up in a pleasant way.  

There are stories of lost children, pregnancies, crushes and loves, death. There are tales of magic and witches, of superstition and fact. Of crows and family. Of growing up and being a child and being different during all of that.

It took me a while to read The Girls. Rose’s chapters are very thick feeling and take some time to get through, but I think the main reason that I was so slow to finish the book was that I didn’t want it to end. This book…I will never forget this book. It is everything I love about a novel—great characters, good plotlines, fantastic language—with the added punch of being about a topic like growing up as a conjoined twin. It is unique, without feeling gimicky. If the book was just about two sisters not joined at the head, it would be still stand up as a great novel. 

I give author Lori Lansens major credit for being able to write about being a craniopagus twin, when she obviously isn’t, with such clarity. She doesn’t leave out details—questions about love-relationships and being a conjoined twin were in my mind when I started reading this novel, and they get addressed because one of the twins conceives at one point in the story. She also doesn’t make the whole novel about the twins. Aunt Lovey and Uncle Stash’s relationship are woven beautifully into the tale, and they become fascinating with all of their flaws and perfections.

I can’t even express how much I recommend this book—if you want to read a good, different, and beautifully written novel, pick up The Girls. 

The Year of Magical Thinking

I am not sure what I can say about Joan Didion’s non-fiction book The Year of Magical Thinking that hasn’t been said before in a review. The book is famous, a masterpiece even, for a reason—it is complex, masterful, reflective, and beautifully sad. Instead, I wish to offer more of a reading guide to the piece. 

If you haven’t read the book, here’s what it’s about: Writers and couple John Dunne and Joan Didion watch their only child, Quintana, develop pneumonia and septic shock several days before Christmas in 2003. She is admitted to the hospital in critical condition and falls unconscious. A few days later on December 30, 2003, while Quintana is still comatose, John is struck at the dinner table by a massive coronary. He dies instantly. After several weeks, Quintana regains her health. She travels to California with her husband Gerry where she collapses in LAX. She is rushed to the hospital where she is diagnosed with a massive hematoma. Quintana, once again, falls unconscious and gravely ill but later recovers.

Didion attempts to make sense of these events, and attempts to understand death. She researches death and the medical problems her loved ones suffer. She turns to the literature. She is a smart, grounded woman, but a part of her still expects John to come back. It is this expectation of his return that she refers to as her “magical thinking.”

Clearly, this book is a rough book to read. It has been on my list for about two years now, as I am quite a fan of Didion. The Year of Magical Thinking is a book that people always talked about in my writing classes in college. It’s an important book in terms of style—Didion never falls into being overly sappy or sentimental, which is a challenged giving the subject matter. (Who could blame her if she did get sentimental or sappy?) If you are going to write a book about death, this is a model of how to do it effectively.

But, like I said, all of this has been said before about The Year of Magical Thinking, so I am going to give two pieces of advice to the reader of this book, based on my own experience. First of all, read it when you must, when it fits for your life. There were other times in my life when The Year of Magical Thinking could have been of use to me, but I decided to pick it up now. The book made me scared of all of the terrible things that can possibly happen. I think if I had been reading this at a rougher period in my life, I could have related to the book more. But instead it just made me nervous. I read the book quickly, trying to get through it so that I could escape the parts of it that made me uncomfortable.

Which brings me to my second piece of advice: Read this one slowly. Read it carefully; absorb it; pay attention to how Didion copes through language. I remember in “The White Album” she writes, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” This is what Didion is doing in The Year of Magical Thinking. She constantly puts the events of John’s death and Quintana’s illnesses into a story, into a timeline. She slows down. She takes the time she needs to make sense of the events in her life. So when you read it, don’t power through it. Take it nice and slow.

In summation, read The Year of Magical Thinking when it is necessary to your own understanding of your own circumstances, and read it slowly. Do not read it like I read it—fast, wanting to know what happens next but also trying to escape the difficult subject matter of death that Didion forces her reader to confront.