My friend Loretta at Pomegranates and Paper, an artist and writer (she has a column in Cloth, Paper, Scissors), recommended some books this summer and I read most of them, but the one that I finished last week is indelibly imprinted in my brain. It is "The Girls" by Lori Lansens, published by Knopf Canada in 2005.
That’s saying a lot because I read addictively and sometimes I forget plots unless my memory is jogged. Consequently, for the past two years I have kept a list of books I’ve read with a few sentences of summary. It helps immensely, although another unforgettable book of the approximately 3-4 books I read a month is “Water for Elephants.”
“The Girls” is about the fascinating lives of Rose and Ruby Darlen, craniopagus twins born joined at the head in 1974. When I first began reading I thought to myself that it would be so tragic I wouldn’t be able to emotionally handle it. Instead, I almost immediately identified with them both. Rose and Ruby are 29 when the book begins and both of them begin to recap their lives in writing from their own points-of-view. It seems that their young, unmarried mother abandoned them as quickly as possible when they were born, but the nurse in attendance at their birth stepped in quickly to adopt the conjoined twins. In her 50s, childless and married to a gentle immigrant, she quickly undertook the challenge.
January Magazine has an excellent synopsis and review of the book, but in a nutshell, Ruby and Rose draw on a common blood supply: over a hundred veins as well as their skull bones are shared, making it impossible to separate them. In order to survive they must work as a team. If one dies, the other goes too.
This description in Rose’s writings about what it feels like to be conjoined was such a beautiful passage.
"Raise your right hand. Press the base of your palm to the lobe of your right ear. Cover your ear and fan out your fingers -- that's where my sister and I are affixed, our faces not quite side by side, our skulls fused together in a circular pattern running up the temple and curving around the frontal lobe. If you glance at us, you might think we're two women embracing ....
....I have carried my sister like an infant, since I was a baby myself. Ruby's tiny thighs astride my hip, my arm supporting her posterior, her arm forever around my neck."
Anyway, I highly recommend this book. Being a staunch supporter of libraries, I got it from my local library, though I had to wait a few weeks until my name came up.
