The Girls - Lori Lansens

Title: The Girls

Author: Lori Lansens

Publisher: Virago Press Ltd.

Genre: YA/Commercial Fiction (some adult content, mild)

Summary

Twin girls Rose and Ruby are growing up in small-town Ontario, cared for by their adoptive parents. They have happy days and sad, they work hard and love their family. In short, they are like any other girls except for one thing: they are conjoined twins.

The story is told autobiographically by the girls, detailing the history of their lives in a

frank and mostly unsentimental manner that is nonetheless touching. The reason for the telling the story? The girls are approaching their thirtieth birthday and a series of ever-worsening health problems means they aren’t likely to reach it.

Review

I really enjoyed ‘The Girls’. I’ve always been a fan of first-person narratives, particularly shared first-person narratives, and Lori Lansens manages to give both girls their own voice, making it clear that although they may share a whole lot of blood vessels and a skull-plate, they’re very much their own people.

There were occasional flaws in the novel – one of the pitfalls of shared narration is that events are often repeated from each perspective. Lansens usually manages to avoid this trap but sometimes it was unavoidable and at those points I was slightly bored. In places it dragged; there were one or two scenes I felt could have been cut in order to pick up the pace. In a novel about time running out for the protagonists I would have expected a rapid pace, but for the most part it is fairly leisurely.

However, it was a good read. There were even a couple of twists which took me pleasantly by surprise! So I would recommend this book with the warning that this is best read slowly. I tried to take it too fast at first, and stumbled because of it. But once I found my way, it was a lovely read which I will definitely read again.

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