The god of small things - Roy Arundhati

The god of small things - Arundhati, Roy

Summary: In 1969 in Kerala, India, Rahel and her twin brother, Estha, struggle to forge a childhood for themselves amid the destrucion of their family life, as they discover that the entire world can be transformed in a single moment - (Baker & Taylor)

Booklist Reviews
/*Starred Review*/ It's easier to talk about small things because the big things in life are far too complex and painful. But even small things can loom large, and everything can change, radically, in a day, a moment. These are the sort of big things first-time novelist Roy ponders in this highly original and exquisitely crafted tale set in the tiny river town of Ayemenem in Kerala, India. The story revolves around a pair of twins, brother and sister, whose mother has left her violent husband to live with her blind mother and kind, if ineffectual, brother, Chacko. Chacko's ex-wife, an Englishwoman, has returned to Ayemenem after a long absence, bringing along her and Chacko's lovely young daughter. Their arrival not only unsettles the already tenuous balance of the divisive household, it also coincides with political unrest. The twins and their cousin--each brimming with vernal intelligence, innocent love and longing, curiosity and fear--barely have time to get acquainted before tragedy strikes, first in the form of an accident (caused by carelessness in love), then murder (the result of ancient prejudice). Roy's intricate, enchanting, and often wry tale is positively mythical in its cosmic inevitability, evocative circularity, and paradoxical wisdom. ((Reviewed May 1, 1997)) Copyright 2000 Booklist Reviews

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I'll Give You the Sun - Jandy Nelson

I'll Give You the Sun - Nelson, Jandy

Summary: A story of first love and family loss follows the estrangement between daredevil Jude and her loner twin brother, Noah, as a result of a mysterious event that is brought to light by a beautiful, broken boy and a new mentor.




Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* When Noah's mom suggests that he and his twin sister, Jude, apply to a prestigious arts high school, he is elated, but Jude starts simmering with jealousy when it becomes clear that their mother favors Noah's work. Noah soaks up the praise, though a little callously, happy to hone his painting skills and focus on the guy across the street, who could be more than a friend. Fast-forward three years, and everything is in pieces. Their mother has died in a car crash, and Noah, who wasn't accepted to art school, has given up painting, while Jude, who was accepted but is no longer the shimmering, confident girl she once was, is struggling in her sculpture class. All her clay forms shatter in the kiln; is her mother's ghost the culprit? Determined to make a piece that her mother can't ruin, Jude seeks out the mentorship of a fiery stone carver (and his alluring model, Oscar). Nelson structures her sophomore novel brilliantly, alternating between Noah's first-person narrative in the years before the accident and Jude's in the years following, slowly revealing the secrets the siblings hide from each other and the ways they each throw their hearts into their artwork. In an electric style evoking the highly visual imaginations of the young narrators, Nelson captures the fraught, antagonistic, yet deeply loving relationship Jude and Noah share

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Breed - Chase Novak

Breed - Novak, Chase

Summary: A couple obsessed with their infertility travels to Slovenia to have an unusual and painful procedure that results in horrible consequences they manage to hide until their twins, Adam and Alice, turn ten years old and start asking questions.




Library Journal Reviews
The Twisden twins are a product of biochemistry, spawned by an experimental Slovenian fertility clinic (recounted in Breed). After the treatment turned their parents into cannibals, ten-year-old Adam and Alice disappeared into the foster care system. Two years later, they're back in their Upper East Side home with their aunt, who's determined to give them the love they never had. But the twins are at the threshold of puberty, a time when the clinic's offspring begin to change into something predatory and savage. A group of clinic alumni runs wild in Central Park, feral children selling vials of their supercharged blood, a veritable fountain of libidinous youth, to aging one percenters. But when a pharmaceutical giant catches on, the twins become the hunted ones. VERDICT Novak (the not-so-secret pseudonym of Scott Spencer, best known for 1979's lyrical Endless Love) has done a marvelous thing for the horror genre by turning his literary pen to monstrous matters. This hair-raising exercise in gothic horror, which reads like a crossbreed of Peter Straub and Whitley Streiber, is beastly, creepy, and altogether freaky. Delivered with a healthy dollop of sardonic humor, the thriller is sure to whet the appetites of Novak's many fans, leaving them ravenous for the next installment.

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Fangirl - Rainbow Rowell

Fangirl - Rowell, Rainbow

Summary: Cath struggles to survive on her own in her first year of college while avoiding a surly roommate, bonding with a handsome classmate who only wants to talk about words, and worrying about her fragile father.



Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Much of the literary fandoms we see are dominated by bookish girls writing and posting online fan fiction, often romantic in nature and frequently featuring gay, nontraditional relationships. But this is Cath's world. Her fandom is the Simon Snow series. Simon is a Harry Potter–like figure who battles vampires and the Humdrum, a creature bent on ridding the world of magic. Devotees by the thousands read Cath's two-year-long opus "Carry On," a piece she's determined to complete before the release of the final installment of the series. However, life has intervened: she's starting college with her twin sister, Wren, who has demanded separate dorm rooms so they could both "meet new people." An awakening unfolds, as Cath battles loneliness, her father's mental illness, a new writing class, and feelings for her dorm mate's friendly part-time boyfriend. This is an epic writ small; the magic here is cast not with wands but with Rowell's incredible ability to build complex, vivid, troubling, and triumphant relationships. The internal lives of the characters are so well developed that it is almost surprising to remember that Rowell is writing in third person. Fans of Eleanor & Park (2013) and other novels about, nerdy types will thrill at finding such a fantastic and lasting depiction of one of their own. Copyright 2013 Booklist Reviews.

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Her fearful symmetry - Audrey Niffenegger

Her fearful symmetry - Niffenegger, Audrey

Summary: When Elspeth Noblin dies, she leaves everything to the 20-year-old American twin daughters of her own long-estranged twin, Edie. Valentina and Julia, as enmeshed as Elspeth and Edie once were, move into Elspeth's London flat and through a series of developing relationships a crisis develops that could pull the twins apart.



Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Niffenegger, a Chicago artist and writer with an elegantly romantic and otherworldly sensibility, earned international acclaim for The Time Traveler's Wife (2003). This season the film version of her best-selling debut will be quickly followed by this cunning and enrapturing ghost story. As evident in her exquisite, fairy tale–like illustrated novels, The Three Incestuous Sisters (2005) and The Adventuress (2006), Niffenegger has a discerning eye and a slyly gothic sensibility, elements that shape this tragicomic fantasy about two generations of twins. Valentina and Julia, inseparable, 20-year-old "mirror image" twins, are still living with their parents outside Chicago when they inherit a flat in London from Elspeth, their mother's long-estranged twin. Unaware of the painful secret that has kept Edwina and Elspeth apart, ethereal Julia and Valentina arrive in London to find they'll be living beside the historic Highgate Cemetery. The flat below theirs is occupied by Elspeth's broken-hearted, younger lover, Robert; the flat above is home to Martin, a crossword puzzle–maker plagued with obsessive-compulsive disorder, and it seems as though Elspeth is still in residence as a meddlesome ghost. With a sumptuously mournful mise-en-scene (Robert is a cemetery guide, as is the author), Niffenegger tells a gorgeously rendered, utterly bewitching, and profoundly unnerving tale of the mysteries of selfhood and death and the way love can be both a radiant and malevolent force. Copyright 2009 Booklist Reviews.

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Cutting for stone: a novel – A. Verghese

Cutting for stone: a novel - Verghese, A.

Summary: Twin brothers born from a secret love affair between an Indian nun and a British surgeon in Addis Ababa, Marion and Shiva Stone come of age in an Ethiopia on the brink of revolution, where their love for the same woman drives them apart.

BookPage Reviews
Author of the much-praised medical memoir My Own Country, Verghese, who is a doctor as well as an author, now offers an expertly composed first novel about missionaries in India and Africa. In 1947, Sister Mary Joseph Praise leaves her missionary post in India to take a new position in Yemen. Traveling by ship to her new home, she saves the life of a fellow passenger—an English physician named Thomas Stone. Their meeting proves a fateful one, as Sister Praise comes to realize when she and Thomas are reunited at a hospital in Addis Ababa. Years later, she dies giving birth to twins—sons named Shiva and Marion, who are raised in Addis Ababa in an atmosphere of political upheaval. Their adopted parents are doctors at the local hospital, and the boys are raised within the confines of the medical complex. Marion serves as narrator for this poignant novel, recounting the story of how his foster parents met. As the two brothers become doctors themselves, they find that their destinies are bound up in each other and in the place they call home. Covering a 50-year span, Verghese’s accomplished novel has plenty of narrative momentum, moving smoothly between exotic locales and exploring ambitious themes of race, identity and family. An insightful and assured writer, Verghese writes from the heart about medicine and politics—timely topics that are clearly dear to him.

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