msjaquiss's review against another edition
1.0
I started this book a few years ago and put it down because it was too grim. I thought I’d try again and see if I could enjoy it more but I simply couldn’t make myself open it again.
misslezlee's review against another edition
3.0
According to the receipts I found tucked away, I purchased this book from Chapter 11 on May 22, 2003. I also snagged a copy of No1 Ladies Detective Agency which I can tell you now, I didn’t particularly enjoy, despite all the rave reviews.
Chang and Eng sat on the to-be-read shelf all that time. I picked it up several times., but it never quite felt like the book I wanted to read just then. I’m not sure what I expected, but I did enjoy the story of the real Siamese twin brothers, Chang and Eng Bunker. It had a kind of Outlander feel to it, though that may just have been the fact that it was set in North Carolina a few decades later. The sex scenes, even though they are of necessity threesomes, do not even approach the descriptions of Claire and Jamie’s torrid lovemaking. Maybe it was something about the descriptions of everyday life?
The dust jacket says the book is woven from fact, myth and imagination. Their story is tragic and rather sad.
Chang and Eng sat on the to-be-read shelf all that time. I picked it up several times., but it never quite felt like the book I wanted to read just then. I’m not sure what I expected, but I did enjoy the story of the real Siamese twin brothers, Chang and Eng Bunker. It had a kind of Outlander feel to it, though that may just have been the fact that it was set in North Carolina a few decades later. The sex scenes, even though they are of necessity threesomes, do not even approach the descriptions of Claire and Jamie’s torrid lovemaking. Maybe it was something about the descriptions of everyday life?
The dust jacket says the book is woven from fact, myth and imagination. Their story is tragic and rather sad.
sarahelizabethii's review against another edition
2.0
Possibly my shortest and snottiest review ever: Yuck.
sarahbowman101's review against another edition
3.0
This was somewhat disappointing, though I don't know exactly what I was looking for. This is a fictional account of Chang and Eng, the famous Siamese Twins (for which the term Siamese was coined). This novel goes back and forth between their birth and childhood in Siam and their adult lives and marriage to sisters in North Carolina.
The pacing between the time periods was fine, but I didn't find the characters very enlightening. No one is very likeable or sympathetic, which makes you wonder at the overall sideshow effect as a reader.
I have read that there are still descendents of Chang and Eng in the same North Carolina area, many of them twins. On retrospect, this seems an under developed part of the book. The only real astonishment comes in the realization of how early their success was (in terms of American History timeline) and that Chang and Eng owned slaves on their North Carolina farm!
Generally, I would suggest to skip this one, there are lots of other great historical novels out there.
The pacing between the time periods was fine, but I didn't find the characters very enlightening. No one is very likeable or sympathetic, which makes you wonder at the overall sideshow effect as a reader.
I have read that there are still descendents of Chang and Eng in the same North Carolina area, many of them twins. On retrospect, this seems an under developed part of the book. The only real astonishment comes in the realization of how early their success was (in terms of American History timeline) and that Chang and Eng owned slaves on their North Carolina farm!
Generally, I would suggest to skip this one, there are lots of other great historical novels out there.
nferre's review against another edition
4.0
I just finished the book this morning and was very saddened by the lives of Chang and Eng. I went online and looked at a couple of websites with more factual information and found that the book followed their lives closely, although adding bits of what could have or might have happened to the storyline. In the end, Eng and Chang had a complicated relationship and wanted to be separated on the one hand, and on the other, they didn't. They needed to tour the world as a freak show in order to make money, and they hated the humiliation that came with posing in front of a crowd of people who stood gawking in the best of cases, and throwing things at them in the worst. They wanted to love women, have a home, bring up children, but the very idea of how to go about having any intimacy - both physical and emotional - with a woman was nearly impossible. They both knew that when one of the twins died, the other would follow within hours, and this is exactly how the book begins - with the death of Chang, and Eng going over the details of their lives while he waits for certain death. The author did a wonderful job of bringing life into these two distinct men, joined for life.
There are still many conjoined twins out there and my heart goes out to them and the parents who have to make the awful decision of whether to separate them or not.
There are still many conjoined twins out there and my heart goes out to them and the parents who have to make the awful decision of whether to separate them or not.
jessferg's review against another edition
2.0
I bought this in 2002, started reading it in 2009 and then stopped 100 pages before the end and forgot about. Guess it didn't make that big an impression. Luckily I was able to pick up where I'd left off and finally finish it (4 years later and 11 years after buying!)I'm no quitter!
Using the real Chang and Eng as inspiration for this novel seems like a mistake to me. This is a novel - not even a historical novel, per se, although the war does factor in to some extent - but it is very difficult for the reader (this one, anyway) to overcome the facts (conjoined twins, married sisters, fathered many children) and remember the characters' actions and deeds are complete fiction.
While most of the story about the brothers' stage life seems accurate and is interesting, the imagined interactions between Chang and Eng and their wives is just creepy. The lack of emotional intimacy followed by 20+ children doesn't seem to make sense and the obsession Strauss imagines Eng had for his brother's wife is just over the top in terms of impossible betrayals. While I generally enjoy split narrative (probably not exactly the right term - chapters alternate between "the past" and "the present") as this is, I found the technique useless here. The climax is actually anti-climactic. The "big reveal" is less than incendiary and is motivated by actions in "the present" so all the work to try and get the reader to see how things merge together in the end is lost and the flashbacks do nothing to fan the flames of explanation. (See what I did there?)
I suppose I wish Strauss had made his characters more generic and ended with a note that he used the brothers for inspiration. He does quite a disservice to Chang and Eng in allowing the reader to develop an opinion of them that is false (and largely uncomplimentary).
Using the real Chang and Eng as inspiration for this novel seems like a mistake to me. This is a novel - not even a historical novel, per se, although the war does factor in to some extent - but it is very difficult for the reader (this one, anyway) to overcome the facts (conjoined twins, married sisters, fathered many children) and remember the characters' actions and deeds are complete fiction.
While most of the story about the brothers' stage life seems accurate and is interesting, the imagined interactions between Chang and Eng and their wives is just creepy. The lack of emotional intimacy followed by 20+ children doesn't seem to make sense and the obsession Strauss imagines Eng had for his brother's wife is just over the top in terms of impossible betrayals. While I generally enjoy split narrative (probably not exactly the right term - chapters alternate between "the past" and "the present") as this is, I found the technique useless here. The climax is actually anti-climactic. The "big reveal" is less than incendiary and is motivated by actions in "the present" so all the work to try and get the reader to see how things merge together in the end is lost and the flashbacks do nothing to fan the flames of explanation. (See what I did there?)
I suppose I wish Strauss had made his characters more generic and ended with a note that he used the brothers for inspiration. He does quite a disservice to Chang and Eng in allowing the reader to develop an opinion of them that is false (and largely uncomplimentary).
haldoor's review against another edition
4.0
An interesting fictionalisation of the life of Chang & Eng, the 'Siamese twins' that conjoined twins are named for. Certain true aspects of their life have been used to make a story told from Eng's point of view from the time they were born in Siam (modern-day Thailand) through to their death in Wilkesboro, North Carolina.
Eng is a learned man, more interested in books than his brother Chang, who descends into alcoholism later in life, but together they are as close as brothers can be for their whole life. They face numerous hardships from being imprisoned by the King of Siam, through to being taken advantage of and being held hostage in America by unscrupulous entrepreneurs willing to make money from them, as well as being stared at, laughed at, and then living through the American civil war.
The twins married American sisters and between them fathered 21 children. They also owned slaves in the tumultuous American South at a difficult time in history, not to mention unusual for men of colour at that time.
This is a fascinating study which, while not 100% factual, certainly gives some idea of what it must be like to live permanently attached to another person and dependent on each other for so many things, least of all co-operation simply to move.
Eng is a learned man, more interested in books than his brother Chang, who descends into alcoholism later in life, but together they are as close as brothers can be for their whole life. They face numerous hardships from being imprisoned by the King of Siam, through to being taken advantage of and being held hostage in America by unscrupulous entrepreneurs willing to make money from them, as well as being stared at, laughed at, and then living through the American civil war.
The twins married American sisters and between them fathered 21 children. They also owned slaves in the tumultuous American South at a difficult time in history, not to mention unusual for men of colour at that time.
This is a fascinating study which, while not 100% factual, certainly gives some idea of what it must be like to live permanently attached to another person and dependent on each other for so many things, least of all co-operation simply to move.
emterf's review against another edition
2.0
I tried, but I couldn't finish this book. It was mediocre all the way.
jiujensu's review against another edition
3.0
This was not bad. I found it in a thrift store and my husband wanted to read it, so I read it too.
I didn't know anything about these particular twins, but they were alive around the time of our Civil War. The story is fictional, so I don't know which parts are known historical fact and which are fabricated. The story alternates between their young life and their lives in Wilksboro, North Carolina.
I could sympathize with their young selves, trying to figure out locomotion, learning Gung Fu from their father - being kids and dealing with the handicap. They were basically stolen from their parents at a young age to be caged and treated like an animal, worse than a prisoner. The kids were sure the King of Siam would kill them, but he ended up showing them around.
The North Carolina part was a typical racist southern Civil War saga with a few interesting bits about how they handled marriage. I don't know if this was true, besides marrying sisters (that part is true), but the reason the mother was pushing them to marry was because one of the sisters loved a slave and they'd given the usual cry of rape for situations like that and killed the man and now she was a pariah. Eng was angry with his wife when he suspected his wife loved the man and she wasn't actually raped. He wasn't mad about killing an innocent man or about slavery....which didn't endear him to me.
I found it odd how Eng compartmentalized and didn't really connect his treatment, really slavery, with his owning 20 slaves. To his credit, I guess, when a Union soldier arrived, he just watched the slaves leave and didn't really get upset. The discussions in the book about the Civil War are pretty terrible and show the misguided confederate point of view I guess.
Otherwise, it's just a story about twins rather unhappily married. One desired solitude and never got it. The other didn't narrate, so I don't know what he thought. And it's an entirely fictional account, so none of the personalities I came to know were real.
I didn't know anything about these particular twins, but they were alive around the time of our Civil War. The story is fictional, so I don't know which parts are known historical fact and which are fabricated. The story alternates between their young life and their lives in Wilksboro, North Carolina.
I could sympathize with their young selves, trying to figure out locomotion, learning Gung Fu from their father - being kids and dealing with the handicap. They were basically stolen from their parents at a young age to be caged and treated like an animal, worse than a prisoner. The kids were sure the King of Siam would kill them, but he ended up showing them around.
The North Carolina part was a typical racist southern Civil War saga with a few interesting bits about how they handled marriage. I don't know if this was true, besides marrying sisters (that part is true), but the reason the mother was pushing them to marry was because one of the sisters loved a slave and they'd given the usual cry of rape for situations like that and killed the man and now she was a pariah. Eng was angry with his wife when he suspected his wife loved the man and she wasn't actually raped. He wasn't mad about killing an innocent man or about slavery....which didn't endear him to me.
I found it odd how Eng compartmentalized and didn't really connect his treatment, really slavery, with his owning 20 slaves. To his credit, I guess, when a Union soldier arrived, he just watched the slaves leave and didn't really get upset. The discussions in the book about the Civil War are pretty terrible and show the misguided confederate point of view I guess.
Otherwise, it's just a story about twins rather unhappily married. One desired solitude and never got it. The other didn't narrate, so I don't know what he thought. And it's an entirely fictional account, so none of the personalities I came to know were real.