One

 One

By Sarah Crossan

Grace and Tippi. Tippi and Grace. Two sisters. Two hearts. Two dreams. Two lives. But one body.

Grace and Tippi are conjoined twins, joined at the waist, defying the odds of survival for sixteen years. They share everything, and they are everything to each other. They would never imagine being apart. For them, that would be the real tragedy.

But something is happening to them. Something they hoped would never happen. And Grace doesn’t want to admit it. Not even to Tippi.

How long can they hide from the truth—how long before they must face the most impossible choice of their lives?

 

One is basically spoken word poetry about being a conjoined twin. Presumably Crossan has researched the topic so I'll trust in her characterization of Grace. While it seems unfathomable to me to want to remain physically attached to someone else, Crossan does a good job of explaining why, to Grace and Tippi, the question would be so offensive. The sisters aren't bad people, they're twins, and what's more natural than staying with your twin? And what kind of alternative is there? At one point, Grace overhears someone saying they can't imagine anything worse. Obviously hyperbole, but as Grace says, there are so many things worse than this, and brings it back to the idea that to be with a loved one forever is not the worst fate.  It reminds me that people are infinitely adaptable. What may be intolerable to someone used to living independently can be eminently reasonable to someone intertwined from birth.  

We're presented with the twins' growing pains over a period of a few short months: as they're unable to afford homeschooling and now have to attend (private) school for the first time.  They make friends, they watch their father wallow in alcohol, their sister slowly starve herself and their mother lose her job.  Grace develops a crush and a heart problem and the sisters have a choice to make. Several, in fact. 

It's a fast read, for all that it's 400 pages, since it is again, like poetry, half pages lost (another reviewer pointed out that the typeface changes alignment from left to center after the twins have surgery, which is a really cool detail) and trailing thoughts. Each "chapter" is basically a poem, and most are <2 pages. And that's fine, since the subject matter is pretty heavy. Prose would have taken ages to finish. 

 

Because of the style though, the book feels less rooted, more dreamlike. For all that Tippi is the person who is closest to Grace, I feel like we barely talk to her the entire book. We're at a crossroads in the twins' lives, which makes for more interesting dilemmas, but contrariwise, I'm not sure that the sisters' relationship feels as developed as it needs to be to support the climactic separation. And the sisters have to consider death and mortality when they consider the surgery options - but there's very little wrestling with that idea too. They make a couple of bucket lists and that's about it. Again, is that realistic? I don't know. As a sixteen year old, I was pretty confident I wouldn't die, but then again, I wasn't conjoined with anyone with a limited life expectancy. 

This feels like an incredibly interesting topic, nicely executed, but also lightly touched.  I don't know that it strikes as deeply as it ought to, considering.

50: A Book That Features A Character With Chronic Pain