Jude Cook

The difficulties faced by identical twins

Being the genetic copy of another human not only presents problems of individuality but offers a ‘rare form of experimental control’, says William Viney

California’s most famous twins, Marian (left) and Vivian Brown, photographed in San Francisco in the 1990s. [Carol Highsmith/Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington DC]
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  • Twinkind: The Singular Significance of Twins

    William Viney

    Thames & Hudson, pp. 225, £25

Despite being a twin myself, I wasn’t necessarily disposed to love William Viney’s Twinkind, a book for which the phrase ‘lavishly illustrated’ might have been invented. Much writing on twins intended for the general reader (including recent fiction such as Brit Bennett’s bestselling The Vanishing Half) has been produced by non-twins, or writers who have twins in their family.

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