Twin

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More About This Book

Overview

A heartbreaking yet deeply hopeful memoir about life as a twin in the face of autism.

When Allen Shawn and his twin sister, Mary, were two, Mary began exhibiting signs of what would be diagnosed many years later as autism. Understanding Mary and making her life a happy one appeared to be impossible for the Shawns. At the age of eight, with almost no warning, her parents sent Mary to a residential treatment center. She never lived at home again.

Fifty years later, as he probed the sources of his anxieties in Wish I Could Be There, Shawn realized that his fate was inextricably linked to his sister's, and that their natures were far from being different.

Twin highlights the difficulties American families coping with autism faced in the 1950s. Shawn also examines the secrets and family dramas as his father, William, became editor of The New Yorker. Twin reconstructs a parallel narrative for the two siblings, who experienced such divergent fates yet shared talents and proclivities. Wrenching, honest, understated, and poetic, Twin is at heart about the mystery of being inextricably bonded to someone who can never be truly understood.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly
In his previous book Wish I Could Be There, Shawn explored his agoraphobia and claustrophobia. Here, Shawn, whose father is the former New Yorker editor William Shawn and his brother the playwright/actor Wallace Shawn, focuses on his twin sister, Mary, who early on is diagnosed with both mental retardation and autism, and institutionalized by the time she is eight. Shawn knows he cannot really penetrate Mary's world, but writes movingly of the lifelong effects of Mary's absence from his. Mary's "sudden, virtually noiseless departure" results in a kind of "survivor guilt," so that "for , to grow up and flourish would mean leaving Mary irrevocably behind." He speculates that his father's inability to face the challenge of caring for her may have been a significant reason for his 37-year affair with colleague Lillian Ross. In addition to his reflections on his own emotional growth and creative evolution, Shawn steps out of the memoir genre to contribute a long informational chapter on how the thinking about autism has changed since it was first identified by Dr. Leo Kanner as a separate disorder from schizophrenia in the 1940s. Whether he's remembering Mary, the deaths of his parents, or his studies with Nadia Boulanger and other great musicians, Shawn writes poetically with honesty and empathy. (Jan.)
Kirkus Reviews

Deeply personal memoir that also examines the mystery of autism.

Composer and pianist Shawn (Music/Bennington Coll.; Wish I Could Be There: Notes from a Phobic Life, 2007, etc.) explores the impact on his life of having a twin sister, Mary, who was sent away the summer they turned nine and who has been institutionalized ever since. While his previous memoir focused on his phobias, this one reexamines his agoraphobia, speculates on his own autistic proclivities and lays bare family secrets. (The author's father was the famously phobic editor of the New Yorker, William Shawn, and his brother is the actor and playwright Wallace Shawn.) As Shawn examines the literature on autism and reports on his findings, the narrative also serves as a capsule history of the scientific understanding of autism. When Mary was a child, Bruno Bettelheim's "refrigerator mother" theory of autism was still respected; today, scientists recognize the complexity and range of the autistic spectrum. The most fascinating sections of the book, however, are the personal passages about Shawn's parents' lives, his teen years and his discovery of music. "Mary's absence had been left largely undiscussed and papered over in our family life," he writes. "Something essential in me had been papered over too, and music was my one means of access to it" In a striking image, the author compares himself and Mary to binary stars, "orbiting individually but subject to each other's gravitational pull." Although he frequently describes Mary's appearance, actions and speech, it is not until the penultimate chapter—in which he details a day-long visit with her at the institution in Delaware where she has spent her adult years—that Mary comes to life for the reader. However, understanding how her mind works, what she perceives about her world and what she is feeling are tasks that even her twin brother cannot accomplish.

In sometimes moving prose, Shawn reveals the psychological damage of having and losing a twin.

More Reviews (1) Fewer Reviews
Michiko Kakutani
…extraordinary…Like his 2007 memoir, Wish I Could Be There…this volume is an unsparing but deeply compassionate inquiry into his family's life. It's a book that combines the sympathetic insight of Oliver Sacks's writings with Joan Didion's autobiographical candor and Mary Karr's sense of familial dynamics—a book that leaves the reader with a haunting sense of how relationships between brothers and sisters, and parents and children, can irrevocably bend the arc of an individual's life, how childhood dynamics can shape one's apprehension of the world.
—The New York Times

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780670022373
  • Publisher: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
  • Publication date: 12/30/2010
  • Pages: 240
  • Sales rank: 631,607
  • Product dimensions: 5.80 (w) x 8.30 (h) x 1.00 (d)

Meet the Author

Allen Shawn grew up in New York. He currently lives in Vermont and teaches at Bennington College. As a composer, he has produced a large catalogue of orchestral, chamber, and piano works, as well as scores for ballet, theater, and film. He performs frequently as a pianist, and he has written for The Atlantic Monthly, The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Times Magazine, and other publications.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating 2.5
( 27 )

Rating Distribution

5 Star

(2)

4 Star

(3)

3 Star

(7)

2 Star

(7)

1 Star

(8)

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See All Sort by: Showing 1 – 20 of 27 Customer Reviews

  • Posted May 13, 2011

    Nena

    It was difficult to understand if the book was about the guy or the sister. It talks mostly about his life and vaguely mentions the sister's autism.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Posted April 6, 2011

    Beautiful and gracious!

    Composer and writer Allen Shawn shares his experience of separation from his twin. As a young girl, Mary Shawn was diagnosed with cognitive and psychological disabilities. She has spent her life in institutional settings. Meanwhile, Allen Shawn has had success as a composer, musician, and writer (his last book, WISH I COULD BE THERE, looks at his own phobias and psychological issues), while their brother Wallace has triumphed as a playwright and actor.

    But the separation between Mary and her brothers left a painful gap in the family, one which Allen Shawn traces here with delicacy and respect. His language, too, is beautiful and musical, and captures the rhythm of Mary's strong personality and her unique choice of words.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Posted March 12, 2011

    terrible sample

    I wanted to read a sample to see if it was worth purchasing, but it was too short! All I could gather was a story about a hamster.....lame! Perhaps adding a few more pages to get the reader interested!?

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  • Anonymous

    Posted February 13, 2011

    Did not hold my interest, boring

    Did not finish reading it, read more than I cared to thinking it would get better, it didn't.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Posted January 31, 2011

    Boring..

    I'm not sure who this book is really about? Is this story about himself or his sister who has Autism? He is doing nothing but rambling on and on. Boring..I didn't finish this book. I ended up skippng parts of the story, I got so bored.

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