Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
A psychologist and a publisher join forces to untangle the secret behind the "obstinate separation" between two identical twins in this jaunty novel from the lauded experimentalist Mathews (1930-2017). Berenice and Andreas fall in love immediately upon meeting in the "extenuated fishing village of immemorial origin" where they have each arrived, seeking to befriend the town's most famous residents. Locals Geoffrey and Margot Hyde agree to help, introducing Berenice and Andreas to a woman who claims to be sleeping with both twins, but even her aid isn't enough to convince the twins to agree to be interviewed. Thwarted, the couple settles into a routine of telling stories over dinner with the Hydes. The stories expose hidden ties between the participants, and Mathews joins in the fun, with the third-person narrator being unmasked as Berenice herself (what was first "a kind of journal" she explains, has "unexpectedly changing into a memoir"). As the novel circles closer to the grand reveal promised by its title, Mathews toys with the reader's "desire to resolve the irresolute, to conclude the incomplete, to have the crooked made straight." The result is an undeniably clever parting shot from one of contemporary literature's most playfully challenging writers. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
This final work by the late Mathews is set in the idyllic New Zealand village of New Bentwick. Presented as airy badinage between Berenice and Andreas, the narrative sidles in on the couple's fascination with identical twins who live in Bentwick. These twins dress alike but act very differently and are never seen together. The aggressive Paul runs a business making textiles, while the easygoing John works on a fishing boat. They also share the same beguiling girlfriend. Since Andreas is a publisher of high-interest nonfiction, he wants to tell the twins' story. As he contemplates how to proceed, he and Berenice engage another couple, Margot and Geoffrey, in a short series of storytelling dinner parties. This produces a story-within-a-story phenomenon, each part intertwining with the main plot rather nicely. The stories become successively more involved until the finale, told by Margot, calls the entire adventure into question in a distressing yet intriguing fashion. VERDICT The slow and steady buildup leading to a crashing conclusion will transfix readers with its narrative energy and mentally chewing on what twinhood, real and imagined, could possibly entail. Overwhelmingly recommended for discerning readers.-Henry Bankhead, San Rafael P.L., CA © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Atmospheric study by the late avant-garde writer Mathews (My Life in the CIA, 2005, etc.), the first American member of the French Oulipo cooperative.A seaside village, its inhabitants a mix of the moneyed, the intellectual, and the seafaring working class. The first to appear in Mathews' slender tale are Berenice Tinker and Andreas Boeyens, who trade arch quips and aperus ("Do you not drink sourpuss martinis to mortify a taste for vintages'?"). A few sentences in, Berenice allows that she's seen John that day, John being one of the Beatles-named twins, the other Paul, who have turned up in town and are setting tongues to wagging: they live on opposite sides of the village, and though they share a taste for pale ale and black cigars, they have not much else in common, from their modes of dress to their religious leanings and lines of work, one mercantile, the other blue-collar. Tellingly, our narrator tells us, "They were in fact never seen together and apparently avoided all commerce with one another." It does not occur to some of the villagers to wonder why this should be so until late in the game, though others remark from the start that there's something just a little bit off in the twins' relationship: "I find their behavior more than a little upsetting," says one well-heeled denizen, but only because the two apparently have so little to do with each other. Well, there's a reason for all that. Mathews' story, with flashing hints of bedroom farce and Hitchcock-ian thriller alike, takes a few twists, sometimes digressing into interior yarns that seem to lose the thread until just the right moment; it's a structural marvel, the product of a master at work. The novel is also perhaps the most accessible of Mathews' later books, especially as it careens toward an end that is more reminiscent of Patricia Highsmith than Georges Perec.A smart, beguiling work elegantly written and with just the right leavening of sexand violence. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
