(Published July 24, 2007 in BC Magazine--Book Review: First Person Plural by Andrew W. M. Beierle)
What if one member of your immediate family was impossible to leave behind, no matter what his reaction to your coming out?
Sexual orientation is still a big deal, still a difficult and divisive issue in our society. Fag and faggot are still easy insults in homes, schoolyards and factories, and 'that's so gay' synonymous with 'that's so lame.' Despite the legal and social strides made in the past fifty years, the realization of being gay still has the power to throw people into crisis. Coming out can feel like jumping off a cliff. Many people, young and not so young, still risk losing family and friends in the process. Many still simply leave everything and everyone behind. What if one member of your immediate family was impossible to leave behind, no matter what his reaction to your coming out? What if he was quite literally stuck to your side? That is precisely the case for Owen, the narrator of First Person Plural, Andrew Beierle's powerful and well-imagined novel about the complicated lives of conjoined twins, one straight, one gay.
Owen and Porter, the protagonists of his story, are conjoined twins of the dicephalus (Latin, two-headed) variety. As Owen succinctly puts it in the opening chapter, they “have two heads, attached to two necks, and a single torso with separate spines fused at the pelvis.” They have, in a single rib cage, “three lungs, two gall bladders, two stomachs, and two hearts.” One controls, and feels, the right side of the body, the other the left. In common, aside from much of their body, is an extraordinary handsomeness. In terms of personality--behaviour, thinking, predilections—they could hardly be more different. One could almost say they are opposites. One, to use simple gendered categories, could be described as a jock, the other a nerd. One is straight, the other discovers he is gay. Did I mention the one body part they share equally? The mass of nerve endings they feel equally? Ah never mind.
First Person Plural is Andrew Beierle's second novel. His first, The Winter of Our Discotheque, has been described as a book for 'rainbow beach bags', or light, campy gay fiction employing all the tricks of a soap opera. First Person Plural, though written in simple, straight-forward, unpretentious prose, is not light reading. While not devoid of humour, this second novel betrays much serious research and reflection. Indeed, in “Freaks 'R' Us: Inhabiting Alien Characters” , a recent guest blog entry on Bookseller Chick, Beierle talks about something probably on the minds of most readers of his novel. What did he do to allow himself so fully into the world, into the most intimate and private lives, of such 'freaks'? The answer, not surprisingly, is that he not only did a certain amount of research on conjoined twins in particular, and twins generally, but that more importantly perhaps, he spent five years deeply immersed in thinking about all manner of things from his own life, and imagining what those things would be like for his characters.
First Person Plural is an idea novel, a thought experiment. What would it be like if two people, two brothers, different in almost every way, but sharing one body, were faced with working out the heterosexual/homosexual conflict? How would they handle that very real, very serious social issue, because they had to, because they did not have the option of running away, of growing apart? How would they learn to find acceptance? How would they allow, and enable, each other to fully be themselves?
The difficulty of carrying out this thought experiment seems evident in the difficulty with which the novel really takes off. While the idea of the novel grabbed me immediately, it took a long time for the story to draw me in, to insist that I continue reading. It seemed laboured, like a heavy plane straining to take off. In order to control the experiment, Beierle takes a long time to set the scene, to put all the variables in place. Some of these efforts seemed a little too controlled. To mitigate the problems of their 'freakhood', so that the main focus could be on the tension resulting from sexual orientation, Beierle places his protagonists in a professional, well-educated, white, financially secure and well-connected family where the boys are able to grow up in a very sheltered and controlled environment. While understandable, the setup seems a bit forced.
The core idea of the novel was powerful enough to keep me reading, even if at times with a measure of impatience, but somewhere in the second half of the novel I was hooked. Suddenly I was engaged. I was involved, not just intellectually, the novel's initial appeal, with the idea of it, but emotionally. I wanted to be there for them, not only as a fly on the wall, but as a friend. I wanted them to work things out, to learn to accept each other for who they truly were. I wanted to see them grow and be happy.
First Person Plural is definitely not your campy, gay beach novel. It may not have the lyrical prose of a Salman Rushdie or Hanif Kureishi novel, nor the poetic language of a Michael Ondaatje or Anne Michaels novel. But these, while wonderful in their works, are not always necessary. Beierle's simple, concise, straight-forward prose is effective. First Person Plural, to be released on August 28th, 2007, should find its place on the bookshelf alongside other serious works of literary fiction.
* Andrew Beierle's first novel:
** visit his web site here
