The Twins

The Twins
Saskia Sarginson
Redhook Books
Hachette Book Group
New York, New York
ISBN: 978-0316-24620-0
2013
$ 16.00
384 pages

Identical twins have a special bond.  For Issy and Viola, they feel that life with their mother is perfect.   Having attempted communal living, now just a single mom and her twin daughters are establishing a new life in a small Welsh town.  It seems perfect especially when the twins develop a friendship with a set of identical twin boys.  To all of them, it seems like fate has given them the unusual gift of a special relationship with identical twin girls meeting these identical twin boys.
The one constant in the universe is change.   When the girls' mother sees a new life with a local widower who teaches math and his young daughter, the twins are not as excited as everyone else.    Being that they are older, naturally the girls are expected to babysit the younger girl who is thrilled about gaining sisters.  Issy and Viola really have no concept about taking care of anyone else.  They have never seen babysitting in action.  Their plan had been to meet with the boy twins.  So how do they ditch the little girl?   Their plan is to coax the young girl into a tree and to leave her there while they run off.
Frequently though, plans don't quite work out the way we plan.   This one incident changed everything for everyone.
Many years later, Issy is working for an upscale magazine while Viola is still having difficulty with her haunted past and is being treated by mental health professionals.   Unfortunately for Issy, new management at the magazine is not impressed with her artistic layouts and she quickly discovers herself unemployed with a generous severance package.
Issy decides to return to her home and to find the boys.   Just because she is ready to confront the past, does not mean the others are at this same stage in their lives.  Can Issy discover what is needed for Viola to heal?
The Twins is a haunting debut novel about relationships and unresolved childhood issues.   With uneven pacing, the novel reveals the past interwoven with the present.   What really happened?
Excelling in character descriptions makes this novel fascinating with truly visual traits for each person.   The tale is bewitching with a realistic ending with many issues not neatly wrapped up in a package.  
Inspired by her own experiences, Saskia Sarginson based this story on her own daughters, identical twins.   She received an MA in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway after a BA in English Literature from Cambridge University and a BA in Fashion Design & Communications.  She also wrote for women's magazines as a health and beauty editor as well as a ghost writer for BBC and Harper Collins.  She resides in London with her four children.
The Twins is a different novel regarding twins and truly is a haunting tale of sibling love.