Astral Twin

Rating:
Summary: Loss and recovery and the mystery of 'what if ...'
Review: Is it an old wives' tale, or a legend, or a myth that we all have a twin somewhere in the world? The unknown other, who shares not only our physical appearance but our personality traits as well? To be true astral twins, two individuals must also have the same birth year, month, day and hour. By day our scientific, rational minds scoff at this notion, but at night around the campfire in a dark forest, the complications and possibilities produce a frission of uncertainty, and the tantalizing promise and attendant fear borne on a 'what if...' course through our minds. Tonja Koeppel has refracted the idea of the astral twin through the complex lens of a modern life shattered by great personal tragedy and thereby has created a compelling drama that puts the reader next to that atavistic campfire where the 'what if ...' at the core of her story becomes plausible and real.

The cataclysmic beginning, when Rebecca Ice and her twin daughters experience disorienting terror because Rebecca's husband and parents are killed in a multi-vehicle accident on a thruway, unmoors normal life for the family and perforates the formerly reliable boundaries that have defined them. 'Hitchcockian' may be a bit too strong, but the suspense in the beginning is taut, and one is compelled to keep reading to see who is drawn next into the expanding circle of consequences. To describe the story would undermine the suspense, so suffice it to say that the drama spins out between the New Jersey shore and Switzerland, between artists and lawyers, between the legal system and the Mafiosi, between the interior life of a grieving widow who fears she is loosing her mind and the burgeoning artistic creativity of a second lonely woman who is grasping at another chance for companionship and love. Amidst all this spinning, the story is propelled forward and compounded by the entry of a man with amnesia into a beach house and a mysterious figure in a baseball cap with an unnerving ubiquitousness.

We know the places and the people in this drama. The descriptive writing is evocative: we feel the off-season sun at the shore, smell the Alpine tang of a Swiss town, and even rush with the bustle of the lobby of the Hilton on 5th Avenue in New York City. We recognize the women in the story: the two who have lost loved ones, albeit in very different ways, and still must answer the quotidian demands of their lives; the aging French companion of a libidinous Hungarian artist, who worries about the lure of younger women; the two twin girls whose anchor in family is rudely untethered at the moment they are loosening their ties and moving into adulthood. Loss, loss, loss - of loved ones, of memory, of security - and the intersecting paths of the characters as they recover, restore and rebuild as life goes on combine to make this novel a 'good read.' May we hope for more from Ms. Koeppel's pen.

Rating:
Summary: A great book - hard to stop reading!
Review: Tonja Koeppel writes an interesting story with many unexpected twists and turns and it is hard to stop reading once you get into it. Her characters are masterfully described and easy to relate to. The sequence of events is fast and keep the reader guessing what's going to happen next?
Astral Twin is a great book!