Identical Strangers by Paula Bernstein and Elyse Schein
Friday, August 29th, 2008Reviewed by Ann
At one time or another, most of us wonder whether we are adopted children, but in Identical Strangers, the two authors have known all their lives that they were adopted. What they never could have imagined is that they are equal halves of a pair of identical twins who were separated shortly after birth and used as an experiment to study firsthand the old question of nature vs nurture. It is nearly unheard of to separate twins for individual adoptions and surely unethical to allow couples to adopt the children without being informed of the circumstances of their birth or of the study.
Paula Bernstein and Elyse Schein have been raised by loving parents, Paula first in Brooklyn and later in affluent Westchester County, NY. She has returned to Park Slope, Brooklyn, where she is contentedly living with her husband and their baby girl. Her world changes forever when she receives a phone call from an adoption informing her that her twin sister is looking for her. She has had no particular interest in searching for her birth mother because her life has been complete.
Elyse Schein, a restless writer and filmmaker, has been living in Paris and has also known that she was adpopted. Her adopted mother, her “real” mother as far as she is concerned, died, when she was six, and in her thirties she has decided to seek information about her birth mother. The information is difficult to track down, and will not be fullly revealed, but what she learns is a shocking revelation: she has a twin sister. It is Elyse who takes the first tenuous steps to find this stranger and become her sister.
The book, written in alternating voices as the two authors describe their journey toward each other and later toward locating the family they share, is a fascinating account of the obstacles and small victories they encounter along the way. In remarkably candid passages, the two women reveal their innermost thoughts as they forge a bond and share a mission to uncover the truth of why the young mother who gave them birth was willing to give them up.
I found myself so engrossed in the story that I read it in a day with just brief breaks for doing what had to be done. I recommend the book and will suggest that the members of my discussion groups consider reading it. It is time well spent.