Title:
- Lives of the Twins
Authors:
- Joyce Carol Oates writing as Rosamond Smith
Genres:
Editions:
| # | Date | Publisher | Binding | Cover |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1987-00-00 | Simon & Schuster |  |
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- Blurb:
- Molly Marks is a very pretty young woman who has never been able to get her life together. She has taken hundreds of courses in various disciplines but doesn"t exactly have a degree in anything from anywhere. She has held lots of fairly glamorous-sounding jobs since the age of nineteen: actress, model, girl Friday for half a dozen people in the entertainment world, freelance interviewer for a series of trendy publications. But she"s always been overqualified and bored. She has chosen the suburban town she lives in "because it has no disagreeable associations," and she makes no effort to recall the number of men with whom she has been involved, casually or otherwise. Now, almost twenty-eight, she is still waiting for her life"s vocation to declare itself. She is waiting for someone or something to come along and tap all that potential. But in the meantime she decides to give psychiatry a try. Maybe that will help anchor her, get her on the right track. She enters therapy with Dr. Jonathan McEwan: handsome, serious and maybe too deep-down good to be true. Very shortly thereafter they acknowledge a mutual attraction, stop the therapy (he tells her there was never much wrong with her in the first place), and become lovers. Finally they decide to move in together. Their first night in the new apartment -- the best night of her life so far, Molly thinks -- Jonathan absentmindedly mentions that he, whom she had thought an only child, has a brother. Not just a brother, but an identical twin. Not just a twin, but one who is also a psychiatrist. Jonathan claims he never mentioned James before because his existence is an unimportant fact. The brothers aren"t close, he says; actually, they don"t speak. Naturally, Molly is intrigued. And because she is who she is (and maybe because she discontinued therapy), she seeks out the other McEwan brother and, using an assumed name, enters into therapy -- and then an affair -- with him too. What follows is a quirky little psychological thriller -- almost a working out of the riddle about the two tribes, one of which always tells the truth, while the other always lies. As Molly struggles to clarify what is "true" about both the brothers and their mysterious past as well as her own motives and desires, a tale unfolds that is not only a satisfying mystery, but also has a lot to say on various contemporary topics from self-delusion to self-destruction.