| View Larger Image | Identical Strangers: A Memoir of Twins Separated and Reunited | Paperbackby Elyse Schein (Author), Paula Bernstein (Author)
| List Price: | $15.00 | | Price: | $10.20 | | You Save: | $4.80 (32%) | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | Random House Trade Paperbacks | | Edition: | Reprintth Edition | | Page Count: | 304 Pages | | Publication Date: | October 14, 2008 | | Sales Rank: | 37,621th |
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FEATURES | - ISBN13: 9780812975659
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
Elyse Schein had always known she was adopted, but it wasn’t until her mid-thirties while living in Paris that she searched for her biological mother. What she found instead was shocking: She had an identical twin sister. What’s more, after being separated as infants, she and her sister had been, for a time, part of a secret study on separated twins.Paula Bernstein, a married writer and mother living in New York, also knew she was adopted, but had no inclination to find her birth mother. When she answered a call from her adoption agency one spring afternoon, Paula’s life suddenly divided into two starkly different periods: the time before and the time after she learned the truth. As they reunite, taking their tentative first steps from strangers to sisters, Paula and Elyse are left with haunting questions surrounding their origins and their separation. And when they investigate their birth mother’s past, the sisters move closer toward solving the puzzle of their lives.Praise for Identical Strangers:Winner of a Books for a Better Life Award“Remarkable . . . powerful . . . [an] extraordinary experience . . . The reader is left to marvel at the reworking of individual identities required by one discovery and then another.”–Boston Sunday Globe“[A] poignant memoir of twin sisters who were split up as infants, became part of a secret scientific study, then found each other as adults.”–Reader’s Digest (Editors’ Choice)“[A] fascinating memoir . . . Weaving studies about twin science into their personal reflections . . . Schein and Bernstein provide an intelligent exploration of how identity intersects with bloodlines. A must-read for anyone interested in what it means to be a family.”–Bust“Identical Strangers has all the heart-stopping drama you’d expect. But it has so much more–the authors’ emotional honesty and clear-eyed insights turn this unique story into a universal one. As you accompany the twins on their search for the truth of their birth, you witness another kind of birth–the germination and flowering of sisterly love.”–Deborah Tannen, author of You’re Wearing That? |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 84 reviews)
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Really Interesting by DANA VANSCOY (Oxnard, CA United States)  4 Stars
September 08, 2009
Can't imagine having a sibling out there that I wasn't aware of. It was so interesting to see how the two women sorted through their feelings as they built a relationship with the person they'd shared a womb with. Really felt like I knew them by the time I was finished.
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Enthralling glimpse into the lives of separated twins by Patrick Talmadge (Seattle, WA) 4 Stars
September 03, 2009
Identical Strangers is a memoir by Paula Bernstein, a freelance writer, and Elyse Schein, a filmmaker. They each take turns telling the story of how they, at age 35, discovered they had an identical twin sister and their reunion. Despite different upbringings, education, and work experiences, the twins share matching gestures, allergies, speech patterns, and a the same taste in movies. The adoption agency, Louise Wise Services, will reveal only that their biological mother was mentally unstable and unaware of who their biological father was. The twins discover that a study was performed on several sets of sperated twins, unforutanlly the records of the study the agency conducted are sealed. So Elyse and Paula organize their own research project by reviewing birth records, tracking down their birth mother's brother and interviewing researchers, who claim that twins raised apart are more similar than those raised together.
Indentical Strangers is an enthralling look at the lives of the twins as they are reunited. Much of the book is devoted to fascinating stories of other twins and triplets who, when reunited as adults, are shocked by how much they have in common with one another. This is an excellent book, I very much recommend it.
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Riveting read! by J. Jacobs (NY, NY United States)  5 Stars
August 14, 2009
The authors take you on a fascinating journey as they rediscover themselves. The discoveries they make about nurture vs. nature will prompt you to reexamine your own attributes. I was especially impressed with the authors' honesty on what it is like to find out you have a twin as an adult.
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Interesting concept; poorly written by Albert G. Dailey (Eliot, Maine)  1 Stars
August 03, 2009
This is definitely a skim-read. Many of the sentences read like submissions to the Bulwer-Lytton contest for purple prose.
As the story is compelling, I guess that's how this got published. However, the writing is predictable, trite, and formulaic.
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Nature Vs Nuture? Decide for Yourself. by Faye D. Klupt (owings mills, maryland USA) 4 Stars
July 08, 2009
This book recounts the inspiring reunion of 2 identical female twins separated at birth through adoption in the 1960s. The twins initially were identified by influential people associated with the adoption agency as potential subjects for a long term "Nature Vs Nurture" study of children born to mentally ill women. While the twins were never actually studied,readers of the book can draw some conclusions of their own regarding nature vs nurture. The influence of life's circumstances on human development is clear as is the powerful effect of genetics. Reading this book is like personally meeting the twins. I enjoyed the experience.
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