the girls by Lori Lansens

The story of conjoined twins Ruby and Rose Darlen this book takes of like a rocket and never really stops as you journey through two rather amazing lives. They spend their whole lives together in a small town. They grow, they hurt, they love, they hate, they have adventures, a pregnancy, death, loss, laughter, a great intelligence and a love of life that although splintered and fragmented in places leaves you reeling.
This book opens your eyes wide to the pain and the finger pointing that difference brings yet you are never left with a feeling of bitterness, and you want to shout and holler at their success's and cry over the failures and the some what cruel hand that fate deals them, their sense of humour is magnificent and rather wicked, lots of laugh out loud moments.
Lori Lansens paints her characters in vivid shades of prose, sparser for some than others, but never less than colourful and with a very rare depth and empathy for what really makes people tick, the way life plays out and how the media often informs our lives in unexpected ways, how it shapes our interests and often takes a very simple like or dislike and makes it life changing.
In even her most difficult and hard to like characters a humanity peeks through often in the most unlikely ways.It is never more true than in this book that wisdom is a wonderful gift and when you turn the last page you know that really love wins out in the end.