Books on Twinloss N° 11 "The Vanishing Game" by Kate Kae Myers

Inspite of the thrilling and often brutal story this is a beautiful book. I wouldn't have thought so at first glance, but the book charmed me more and more while I read on. Myers has a gift of letting places and people came real before the reader's eyes by the use of just a few words.
17-year-old Jocelyn has lost her twin-brother Jack in a car accident. She is devastated and wrecked with grief but spring break is approaching and her friends ask her to go camping to get her mind off things. Reluctantly she agrees to go - much to the relief of her foster-mother who is worrying about her - but then a letter arrives. Seemingly from her brother.
Jocelyn is shocked and then thrilled because she suddenly sees the possibility that Jack only faked his death and is really alive. She sets off to look for him, her foster-parents thinking she has gone camping. First she goes back to the place in Watertown where she and jack havge lived in a foster-home called Seale's house, five years ago. Their best friend in those days, Noah, is still in town and Jocelyn seeks him out. That he tries to kill her at first sight doesn't prevent them from setting out together on a search for Jack, and he isn't making it easy to find him.
When they were children at Seale's House run by a cruel lady who was more interested in the money than the foster-children themselves, Jack often laid out clues for Jocelyn and Noah, made them solve mysteries and riddles in order to find something he had hidden. He used the codename of "Jason December" then and this is the name on the letter Jocelyn got. Together she and Noah unravel the present riddle, their past, which has riddles of its own, and a present riddle which is getting bigger and bigger and very frightening.
If I tell the whole story anyone who is going to read the book will miss most of the fun in reading it ;-), but as for twin-loss "The Vanishing Game" does not offer a deep psychological view on the subject as "Surviving Sam" does for instance. Rather it shows the impact itself, the wordless, unbelievable shock not to be reasoned with that holds Jocelyn in its grips after years. Myers talent makes the impact almost visible - and leaves me as the reader with a feeling of hope at sunset in the last chapter, the possibility of a new day.
An unusual book and maybe the fact that Myers is a sing language interpreter even contributes to its special charm. Not only does she use signs a lot in her story, the talent she shows in making things visible must make her an outstanding interpreter in that field, I'm sure :-).

About living in the wrong world

There is not a website or magazine or book about twin- or multiple pregnancies missing the detail that it is very much different from a singleton pregnancy - for the mother. Still even the well-known National Geographic DVD on multiples states that the twins grow in the womb without ever knowing of each other.
This is - of course - not true. If a twin-pregnancy is different for the mother it is even so for the babies. They grow and develop in precisely the environment described as different from a singleton pregnancy and therefore their development is different from that of a singleton-fetus. Within the first three months of pregnancy almost the entire physical development of the human body takes place. After that it's mostly growing. During this crucial time a twin-fetus' body, every organ, above all the brain, develops in the described environment different from that of a singleton-fetus: the womb inhabited by twins. The twin-fetus becomes provided for a twin-life, it's body is shaped under twin-conditions and if there is a soul at all that is not miraculously inserted into the body at birth it undergoes the same process.
When twinloss occurs - especially during this crucial time of the first three or four months - the world the twin-fetus was shaped for suddenly no longer exists. It comes to this world fully equipped for a different one: a twin-world.
And here I am asking myself why I so often feel I am living in the wrong world ...

Photos as a means to heal

On a website about TTTS I found several stories from parents who had lost one of their twin-babies to that ugly disease. In order to create an image of his/her twinship for their surviving child they make pictures of the child and modify them so they show two children. Of course, it's the same child twice and nobody syas otherwise, but since TTTS mostly affects identicals it's still a way to create a visible might-have-been and parents find this healing for themselves and their survivors. I tried to do it on a picture of me at age age 3. These two pictures are set next to one another in a scrapbook my parents made for me when I was a child and they do look like twin-photos even without arranging them (which I am not very good at).

Books on Twin LOss No 10 "From a clear blue sky" by Timothy Knatchbull

I had read Timothy Knatchbull's story years ago in Joan Woodward's "The Lone Twin" and when I heard he had written a book himself I thought: I have to read that. Still, it took me almost three years to actaully buy it. Other books came between and I sort of forgot to look out for his and then it came my way again in a peculiar manner.
I had one of those crazy dreams I seem to have a subscription on. In this one I was washing my clothes in a muddy puddle and - not surprisingly - got them back just as dirty, but I kept putting them back into the murky water. The next day I just stumbled upon this book on I-don't-remember-which-site and ordered it right away. It was just the remedy I needed, the clear water missing in my dream.
Timothy Knatchbull, a great-grand-nephew of some degree to the Queen of England (I couldn't decipher the relation correctly not being familiar with Royals at all) was born an identical twin. In his book he describes his relationship with his brother Nicholas both matter-of-factly and touchingly. "In a way we were married to each other", he says, and that they had constant company and empathy, they truly were each other's best friend and inseparable. Before Nicholas died they had hardly spend more than two or three days apart.
Nicholas died at age 14 when the IRA put a bomb into the boat the Knatchbulls and their extended family, including the Grandfather, Lord Mountbatten, a prominent member of the royal family, used during their holiday in Ireland. Only Timothy and his parents survived. Twenty years later Knatchbull tries to trace his life back to the second he and his twin-brother were ript apart. he follows first his family's history and especially their link with the small town of Mullaghmore in Ireland, step by step, minute by minute, he approaches the fatal moment when the bomb exploded, then the rescue, the stay in hospital, the funeral he couldn't attend, the slow recovery (including a beautiful chapter about a stay at the Queen's own scottish castle for recuperation) and his way into adulthood till the point he realizes he is not as well as he makes everyone including himself think. To hear the sound of a bomb exploding in your every other day is not normal and healthy, he finally states and seeks out professional help. But more therapeutic then the appointments with a psychologist it's to Knatchbull to go back, step by step, to the day and place it happened and find a way to do what he couldn't do at age 14: say good-bye to this twin-brother.
I followed Knachtbull's story breathlessly and tried to make it my own. There has been a moment in my life when just something like that occurred, a bomb exploded under me and tore my twin and me apart. Only it wasn't a bomb. Only it had no sound in the womb. Only I will never be able to trace my life back to that moment the way Timothy Knachtsbull did. I tried to do it by proxy using his book, though, and it tought me a new respect for this moment, shrouded by the prenatal past, but nevertheless just as real and fatal as the IRA-bomb was for him and Nicholas. Maybe this is gain enough from an otherwise very thrilling and interesting book: to know something like that DID happen to me and I will find my way to deal with it. It cannot be the same way Knachtbull took, but a way can be found when I closely listen to the sound of MY bomb and try to find the traces leading to it. And on.

Am I a TTTS-Survivor?

Recently I gave the thought some room why my mother wasn't more shocked by having a miscarriage. Knowing my mother she could just have been occupied with something else and not notice much, but to give her credit I think she would have been more troubled had she lost a lot of blood. So, that she didn't indicates the placenta did not abrupt and this might indicate a single placenta, a monochorionic pregnancy. Some of my mother's symptoms match the placental disease of TTTS, Twin-to-twin-transfusion.syndrome. To make a long story short in those cases one twin gets too much blood and the other one not enough. It's very dangerous for both twins and even today where laser surgery is available sometimes both babies die. The twin who doesn't get enough blood - called the donor - often has little or no amniotic fluid, gets "stuck", is delayed in growth while the other twin - called the receptor or recipient - develops hydrops (fluid under the skin), has far too much amniotic fluid and often suffers from heart-failure due to having to pump too much blood. IF my mother had it - and there will never be any proof - it might explain the small size of the fetus, that it was able to slip out at all, and the symptoms she felt on herself like high blood-pressure, kidney failure and such which took her hospitalized sometime in March '63. Also, I had some symptoms that might be associated with TTTS at birth like a very large placenta and an umbilical cord unusually thick. Also, IF my mother had TTTS my twin most probably was a girl, although in v ery, very rare cases TTTS develops between fraternal twins, too, when their placentae fuse.

Books about Twinloss No 8 "Bang, Bang, you're dead" by Narinder Dhami

This book is an atrocity! I startet perusing through the German version in a bookstore and then found out I could purchase it via amazon.de for 0,01 Eurocent (+ E 3,00 shipping from the UK). So, I did read it, eventually, and was livid afterwards.
I have read other books by the same author and liked them. They were all about indian girls in british society and they were fun, but this one isn't nor is is designed to be.
The plot: Mia is fourteen an telling her story. That her twin brother Jamie is dead she mentions almost first thing on page one. She then proceeds to tell about how she and Jamie and their mother who has bi-polar disorder try to make it through life together. How her beloved grandfather died some years ago after shouldering most of the responsibility of the small family (the twin's father vanished before their birth). How her mother's behaviour becomes more and more unpredictable and bizarre and how Jamie threatens "to do something" and that he "may no longer be there" soon. So, when the rumour runs through school that someone with a gun is in the building, Mia believes it may be Jamie driven to something desperate and she sets out own her own to find him.
She tracks the shooter through the building rather smartly, finds out is is NOT Jamie, manages to lock him into a room, gets rescued just in time, ends up in hospital and when she frantically asks for Jamie meets the astonished gaze of a doctor asking her "Who is Jamie?".
At this point the intelligent reader realizes that Jamie as a figure has remained a bit vague, and for good reason: he died at the twin's birth.
The rest of the story is unraveled at high speed level. Mia sees a psychologist, tells her she has always known Jamie is a ghost. The shrink doesn't believe her. It takes Mia only two more pages to realize that she has made up Jamie herself, that she is even more bi-polar than her mother and has to have therapy. Knowing this truth about herself, she curls up in her bed, whispers "Good-bye, Jamie, I don't need you any more" and finita la comedia!
Thus Narinder Dhami turns the whole subject of twinloss at birth into an illness that can be cured, and in a jiffy!
I tried to contact the author and give her a piece of my mind, but her contact form would bounce back my emails and I couldn't find any other address on the web.
So, if you like a criminal story with a surprising end - or, since this isn't a surprise to you any more, know someone you might like to give it to - go ahead, but as far as twinloss is concerned it is worthless and possibly damaging.

Books about Twinloss No 7 "The secret twin" by Denise Gosliner Orenstein

This book is special. I must admit I haven't managed reading it through, yet. I read more than half and then started leafing through to find out about later events, because I was too impatient to get their in due time ;-). And this book isn't an easy read. This book is literature to be taken seriously, yes, Sir.
The story sounds simple enough. A little boy lives with his grandmother. She has to go to hospital and a temporary caretaker moves in with the boy. They have a not-too-easy time getting to know each other, but in the end become fast friends, which is all the more beneficial for both because the grandmother dies.
So far, so not-at- all to the clue. Noah is no ordinary boy and his grandmother whom he calls Mademoiselle is no ordinary grandmother. Noah was born a conjoined twin, but it was clear from the start that only one of the twins could survive. An unprecedented operation saves Noah's life and ends his brother's. He keeps the newspaper articles on the event under his bed in a box.
Noah's parents died in a car accident and he grows up with his grandmother. We learn to know her mainly through her grandson's appearance to the caretaker Grace - who has a story of her own about life and loss.
This book is magic and NOT because the author choose to weave the symbols of the Tarot cards into the story. The plot includes a mysterious murderer whom Noah confuses somehow with his twin and who leaves cards of the Great Arkana behind, but the story is magical enough without this feature. Grace's perspective on life. Through food. The way she fights for her own little boy who got lost - her little brother killed in an accident - and later for Noah. The way Noah finds out about his grandmother, how she loved him, how she not loved him and how he loves her, in the end. The way Noah comes to term with his twin and his twinship, how he climbs from being half a boy to being someone like no other, maybe, but still himself, and maybe, most miraculous, the way Orenstein manages to describe a clearly obese and simpe-minded young woman like the most insightful and important and precious person in the whole wordl - not only for Noah.
It's hard to describe this book without adapting the magical style Orenstein weaves. It's sure like none of the other twinloss books I read. I'm still not sure whether I like it or not, but it sure is special.