Pamela Spiro Wagner

I chose this book for research purposes (characters in my novel are twins--boy and girl--and one is schizophrenic) and had high hopes. It's hard to give this book two stars because it's essentially a dual narrative, and I very much like one of those narratives. Clearly, Pamela Wagner, the twin suffering from schizophrenia, is a substantial talent. I was not surprised to learn she was a decorated poet. In fact, in her narration of her extreme schizophrenia, I felt able to see--to really feel, actually--how these delusions can feel very real. How they can have the structure and the plausibility of something real. The coolness of her narration heightened the emotions--the sign, to me, anyway, of an expert writer.

Carolyn, on the other hand, while more successful professionally and clearly quite intelligent herself, grew more unlikable as a narrator the deeper I got into the book. If I had been the editor, I would have suggested some judicious cuts. For example, no doubt Carolyn has been through hell and back and experienced torment that few of us can even imagine. However, her tone was self-pitying, self-focused, and sometimes downright petty. I think her plight would have provoked far more emotion in me if she had simply laid it out as it happened rather than reminding me, the reader, how burdened she was by her sister's illness, and then how ashamed she was for feeling that way. But the pettiness in particular got to me. For example, I tired of hearing her describe her sister's weight gain on one of the anti-psychotics. To me that's a one-and-done comment, especially since Pamela mentions it as a reason why she would quit the drug, but it appeared again and again in Carolyn's narrative. I was completely flabbergasted by her unfair treatment of her ex-husband in the book, when it had absolutely nothing to do with the narrative of her sister's schizophrenia. To lay out his faults--including her assessment of his lack of sexual prowess--felt deeply unfair and irrelevant, and I think it was at that point when I turned. I have no idea why Carolyn's editor at St. Martin's didn't save her from this mistake.

I was also flummoxed by Carolyn's seeming lack of understanding of schizophrenia when she has not only treated schizophrenics in the past, but is apparently a highly respected psychiatrist. When it came to Pamela, it was as if she'd never heard of schizophrenia before, was unable to make sense of what I think are fairly trademark symptoms--even after Pamela was diagnosed. I certainly believe that she had a blind spot, but I would have liked to have had her explore this blind spot in more depth rather than spend time on her blasted ex-husband or her new "lover" Johan. What was her experience as a psychiatrist like? What kind of psychiatrist was Carolyn? How did she approach her work? Didn't she go into this line of work because of her sister? It seemed to me that Carolyn limited her narration to her experience of phone calls in the middle of the night from mental hospitals, her visits to those hospitals, and the domestic issues going on in the background. I would very much have liked to have known about Carolyn's professional experience, her accomplishments, her approach to her work, and how that might tie back to her experience with her sister.

So clearly I was disappointed by that aspect of the dual narrative, and I suspect that early readers of the manuscript or even her later editors may have pushed her to include banal details about her personal life to demonstrate how Carolyn was the one able to live a normal life while Pamela had to live in this prison of her mind. I just don't think it worked. But I'm grateful they've shared their stories.… (mehr)

A story of identical twins. Well, they looked the same and were fiercely intelligent, but there was nothing else similar about them at all. One went to Harvard and became a psychiatrist. The other became a psychotic and went to many mental homes.

However, along the way the bi-polar, schizophrenic sister discovered poetry and became an award-winning poet writing as she did from a frame of reference alien to almost all of us. She brings us glimpses from another mind, a land which might not have had many beautiful landscapes but is certainly captivatingly foreign.

Together, without sparing each other or their family, the sisters wrote this book from their own perspectives. The sane one filling in what the psychotic one doesn't remember. The book doesn't describe schizophrenia and its effects as much as relate the experience of it from within. I know several people with schizophrenia but had never realised quite how much it was an alternative reality: one lived in an unremitting depressive hell without past memories or, when sunk into its psychosis, any knowledge or hope of a better future. Drugs sometimes provided remissions, but it is a deteriorating disorder and the last look at the two sisters is of the professional family woman and her sister, the bag lady, the poet.… (mehr)

One sister went to Harvard and became a psychiatrist, the other, though also brilliant, was bedeviled by voices and has spent her life in and out of institutions.

The part describing their growing up years was interesting as the twins tried to establish their own identities. Each was competitive yet felt bad for trying to get distance.

The schizophrenic sister is unable to get her health or life together, but becomes an award-winning poet.

Later, the narrative bogs down when it seems clear that the sick sister isn't going to get better, despite different medications and treatments. It's sad and obviously hard for the well sister, but the story pretty much ends here.

It's annoyingly written: there's a big drama about whether one of the well sister's psychiatrist friends can or should treat the schizophrenic sister, and finally it's decided that she will. But then two pages later she retires from practice. What was that all about? It ends without much resolution for anybody, with the contrast between the psychiatrist and the bag lady. Pretty much like real life, but not a great story.… (mehr)