The Love Curse of the Rumbaughs by Jack Gantos
My rating: 4/5 cats
seriously?
montambo recommended this book to me because i fear twins and their freakish abilities and the way they want to use mind control on us all. this book didn’t make me change my mind w/r/t their potential for evil. at all. *
but for a teen audience, this? it opens with a wallace stevens quote:
In the presence of extraordinary actuality, consciousness takes the place of imagination.
already, this ain’t no twilight.
and from there it goes into eugenics and mengele and taxidermy-as-love and maternal obsession and the myth of free will and family curses (natch) and awkward, creepy sex.
also a misunderstanding about why twins are scary,
…we threaten them because we are so alike. Everyone believes that they are individuals and that their lives have been shaped through their experiences. But that’s a charade, and they know it when they take one look at us because we are who we are through our genes. They believe in nurture, but we represent nature, and for most people nature is untamed and primitive and too dark and unpredictable. We live out our lives as the actors in a genetic script—that’s nature’s path.
sir(s), that is not why you are spooky. turn back a few pages…there it is:
being a twin is both spiritual and physical… when Father had us adopted by those eugenics people [living in separate households—ktb:], being a twin was a blessing. I was unhappy, but I knew what was going on inside of Dolph. I could feel what he was about. We liked the same food, and what he ate I could taste in my own mouth as he could with mine. We had toothaches at the same time. Sang the same songs. Had the same favorite colors. Same handwriting. Same grades in school. Same dreams. Same pets. Same names for the pets…There are times when I ask, how does Dolph feel today? And the answer is often clearer than if I asked myself how I felt. Some days we don’t even have to talk. We can just mind-read each other.”
there it is—that’s why people find you threatening. that is just unnatural. bluck.
but my twin-phobia aside, this is a very fun little book. yes, it is psycho, yes it is a rose for emily, but teen fiction can get away with revisiting already paved roads, because how many teens you know that are reading faulkner? his writing is good:
I opened another drawer and jerked back. It was filled with egg-shaped prosthetic eyes, and as they waddled back and forth and clicked together they stared out at me with trapped, insane expressions. I slammed shut the drawer as if it were incubating some abnormal creation and opened the next.
the book itself, however, is too brief to do real justice to the concept. there are real strengths here; i think it may be a little bit overwritten for a teen audience; it goes into abstractions that are maybe too sophisticated for people who may be being exposed to these concepts for the first time, but maybe there are smarter teens out there than the ones i see every day at work, struggling to understand the articles in the pretty-boy magazines and poring over the astrology books in between make-out sessions. if not, we are screwed.
i just read this because i felt i was too sleepy last night to do proust any justice, and i figured this would be quick and light. but with all the mother love and separation anxiety, there is a bunch of overlap between this and proust, so i am really interested in seeing where the final two volumes of À la recherche du temps perdu end up. or maybe someone could do a new mash-up: remembrance of things past and zombies.
rarrrr
this makes me even more excited to read this book.
and, because who doesn’t like pictures??
shudder.
*i knew by reading the description that it would perpetuate my fears, and i am pleased and relieved that this book exists to help further my cause to put an end to them once and for all. when i run for president, this is the only issue upon which i will comment publicly. elect me and put a stop to mind control.
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