I have recently finished a wonderful, much under-read novel by Wilkie Collins titled Poor Miss Finch that focuses on a mysterious pair of identical twin brothers who court one beautiful girl in one small village in East Sussex, UK, and, thus, got inspired to write this post. It is the continuation of my previous post – “Double Trouble”: 7 Books That Focus on Identical Twins, where I talked about works of such authors as Christopher Priest and Hanya Yanagihara, and since that time have read a number of other books about twins. Though identical twins as side characters are more or less a well-known, permanent fixture in literature (Harry Potter, Gone With the Wind), there are actually some great books out there that have them as intriguing lead characters, too.
Poor Miss Finch [1872]
Inspired by his own short story The Twin Sisters [1852], Wilkie Collins wrote Poor Miss Finch in 1872. The tale is about one strong-willed French woman, Madam Pratolungo, who becomes a companion to a beautiful blind girl living apart from her extended family in a small village of Dimchurch in East Sussex. This girl, Lucilla, falls in love with a dashing young man Oscar Dubourg, but he has a more confident and outspoken identical twin brother Nugent, who may also have strong feelings for Lucilla. When Oscar’s appearance changes, and there is also a prospect that Lucilla may recover her sight, Nugent senses that it may be time to make his move. The plot revolves around one preposterous turn of events and there is some melodrama, but this is still a fine page-turner of a novel with vivid characters (including little “vagabond” girl Jicks and eccentric doctor Herr Grosse), bold themes, and delicious psychological aspect of a rivalry between two very different brothers.
The Comedy of Errors [1623]
Partly based on Plautus’ Menaechmi, The Comedy of Errors is a curious early five-act comedy by Shakespeare where two men (Antipholus and his slave Dromio) lost their identical twin brothers in infancy and search for them only for the lost men to end in the same place as Antipholus and Dromio do some years after – Ephesus. In addition, they also live under the same names, causing instances of confusion and mistaken identity in the place. Shakespeare’s other famous play Twelfth Night also focuses on twinship and mistaken identities as the story centres on Viola and her fraternal twin brother Sebastian.
The Old Capital [1962]
This is another classic book about twins that is worth all the attention. Yasunari Kawabata tells a delicate tale of one twin sister, Chieko, once adopted by shopkeepers, slowly realising the existence of another twin she has as the two find each other after years of separation. The setting is Kyoto, Japan, rich in history and tradition, providing a perfect backdrop for this tale of coming to terms with the past and realising its implications for the present and future. Kawabata weaved into this tale much symbolism and longing. This book also formed part of my post Imagining Menus from Books.
On the Black Hill [1982]
“Because they knew each other’s thoughts, they even quarrelled without speaking.” Bruce Chatwin is probably best known as a writer of travel book In Patagonia [1977], but he also penned a number of novels, and this tale is about inseparable, unmarried twin brothers Lewis and Benjamin Jones, living quietly on a farm on the border between England and Wales. This is an evocative book about one secluded way of life dictated by nature and hard work, as Chatwin pays a special tribute to the beauty of the countryside and to the rural life as yet unaffected by industrialisation.
Wise Children [1991]
Inspired by Shakespearean plays (including Twelfth Night and Hamlet), this fiction by Angela Carter is about twins Dora and Nora Chance, chorus girls and illegitimate daughters of a Shakespearean actor. They make their first steps on stage, and decide to monetize on their twinship to get ahead in a theatrical community. Amidst the hardship and the turmoil of that time (Britain of the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s), they can be sure of one thing: their unwavering devotion to each other. This is a fun, in part nostalgic, book of a family drama that gets progressively crazier with each chapter.
The Poisonwood Bible [1998]
This may not be a novel when one thinks: “books about twins”, but Barbara Kingsolver crafted one memorable set of twins there, who are part of Priest Nathan Price’s family: Leah and Adah. The story takes place in the late 1950s/early 1960s in Belgian Congo, where the missionary family of Nathan Price now resides. The multiple characters’ perspective means that we soon get “inside the head” of each of the family members who all have to come to terms with their new environment and challenges of the place so remote and so unlike their home back in the US. Twin sisters Leah and Adah are different (Leah being an idealistic tomboy, and Adah – a bookworm with disability), but their twinship still elicits wonder, curiosity and some disturbance in the story largely thanks to Adah’s exceptional powers of observation.
One Out of Two [1994/2016]
Daniel Sada (1953-2011) was a well-known Mexican writer and poet, and his slim novella One Out of Two (Una de dos) is about one duo of inseparable twin sisters, seamstresses Gloria and Constitución. They trick a man into dating them both, but all fun things soon come to an end as jealousy and vanity resurface in the sisters’ once close relationship, and their lifetime “oneness” comes into question. Sada was much admired for his inventive use of Spanish, and though this translation by Katherine Silver does capture some of the author’s playfulness, it is the story’s themes and symbolism that would perhaps appeal more to an English-speaking reader. This is one quirky little work of some interestings insights into duality, mirages, identity, and sisterly affection.
Being a fraternal twin myself (having a twin brother), I generally find books about twins irresistible, and have also read some other exciting thrillers about twins, but because twinship there was part of a plot twist, I have decided to leave them out for now. What about you? Do you like reading novels about twins or maybe doppelgängers? What particular psychological aspect do you think they bring to a plot? Do you have other book examples?
