reading notes

by Mark Slouka

ISBN: 0375702091

This story of two brothers ranges from the monsoon-wracked Meklong in Siam to high society Paris to flophouses in London to the Civil War-torn American South. The brothers struggle with poverty, love, faith, grief, and being literally connected to each other.

The brothers are Siamese twins — the original pair — Chang and Eng. Slouka has fictionalized their story in this lyrical novel. Told from Chang’s point of view, the reader is treated to the story of two very different yet inescapably connected men. Slouka takes fantastic biological and cultural facts and uses them to string together an emotionally honest, if not entirely true story. I should say I don’t know how true Slouka’s story is: I haven’t researched Chang and Eng.

While Chang recognizes that the outside world sees him and his brother as freaks, what being a freak means has not been constant over time. Chang muses:

No, if science and reason had accomplished anything, I thought, it was to make us less ashamed of poking our fingers in the wound. Whereas before we might have shivered at the sight of the extra finger, the humped spine, the male root growing from female flesh, now we could measure and describe, draw and dissect it in the name of science. Whereas before we might have gawked at the freaks who vied for our attention and our money, now we could catalogue and collect them, Latinize and label them like carnivores’ teeth in locking cabinets or malignant tumors in bell jars. And perhaps this was progress.

It may not appear credible that conjoined twins from Asia could wind up as farmers, slave holders, husbands, and fathers in North Carolina. Or that they could try and kill each other, outwit P.T. Barnum, and witness fighting in the Civil War. But I don’t feel like I need to know the literal truth, because in God’s Fool, I believed all these things, I believed (and believed in) Chang.

Highly recommended.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 30th, 2004 at 9:34 pm and is filed under fiction.