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Title details for One and the Same by Abigail Pogrebin - Available

One and the Same

My Life as an Identical Twin and What I've Learned About Everyone's Struggle to Be Singular

by Abigail Pogrebin
Justine Eyre
Audiobook
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Writer. Mother. Wife. New Yorker. Abigail Pogrebin is many things, but the one that has defined her most profoundly is "identical twin." Pogrebin's relationship with her sister—both as children, when they were inseparable, and today, when she longs for that uncomplicated intimacy—inspired her to examine the phenomenon of twinship, to learn how other identical pairs regard their doubleness and what experts are learning about how DNA impacts our sense of identity and shapes our lives.


In One and the Same, Pogrebin presents a tapestry of twinship, weaving science reporting and personal memoir with the revelatory stories of other twins, such as two sisters who stopped speaking for three years; football stars Tiki and Ronde Barber, who admit their twinship comes before their marriages; a pair of bawdy, self-proclaimed "twin ambassadors" who have created a media empire around their twinness; and brothers whose shared genetic anomaly wrought unspeakable tragedy. In this stirring account, Pogrebin shows how living identical is both a celebration of sameness and a struggle for singularity that defines us all.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    November 30, 2009

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781400194841
      • File size: 257536 KB
      • Duration: 08:56:31

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Abigail Pogrebin, an identical twin, examines "twinness" in every way possible. She mixes her own experiences with those of others into an engaging exploration of heredity and psychology. Her book purports to include her answer to the most common question people ask her: "What was it like to have grown up with an exact likeness?" She mentions some scientific studies, but her own ideas fill most of the discussion. Narrator Justine Eyre's comfortable manner makes her seem like the author talking. She sometimes assumes a silliness appropriate to a light topic but can morph into a serious mode for an academic discussion, for example, of twin dependency or competition. In the interviews, Eyre individualizes the various characters by giving each one a hasty personality. J.A.H. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      August 24, 2009
      Journalist Pogrebin (Stars of David
      ) explores in a palatable, nonscholarly format some of the sticky issues of identity that accompany being a twin. Enjoying an “extreme intimacy” from embryo to adulthood, twins, especially identical, achieve a unique, somewhat exclusive self-sufficiency that can be comforting and enriching as well as stifling and restricting. Pogrebin, whose own twin, New York Times
      reporer Robin, grew less needy for the other's presence as they grew older, interviews numerous twins in various walks of life to probe the source and stages of their emotional development, from football stars Tiki and Ronde Barber to a pair of 86-year-olds who were operated on by Dr. Mengele at Auschwitz. Some of the recurrent topics that Pogrebin superficially explores include the sense of not needing other people as much as twins need each other, thus making it harder to find intimacy outside of the duo; feeling “jilted” when the other finds a partner or spouse (“Anybody who marries a twin,” asserts one, “has to understand that they're marrying two people”); dealing with the amplified competition and constant comparison; parental favoritism; and the importance of establishing a distinct identity from the other. Touching on timely medical topics such as the “risky business” of multiple births, especially by in vitro fertilization, and recent discoveries in DNA research, Pogrebin's personal journey will prove helpful to other twins, but is not the end word on the subject.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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