The Girls
Lori Lansens (Alfred A. Knopf Canada)

For a writer, there is perhaps no harder act to follow than a successful first novel. Rush Home Road, Lori Lansens' debut, garnered rave reviews and was a national bestseller. Happily, her second novel ,The Girls, also has elements that will please critics and readers alike. The Girls, Rose and Ruby Darlen, are on their way to becoming the world's oldest surviving craniopagus twins -- they are attached at the head -- if they live to their 30th birthday. Abandoned at birth, they are adopted by a no-nonsense middle-aged nurse and her Slovakian-Canadian husband who try to raise them in as normal an environment as possible on a farm in southwestern Ontario. An aspiring poet, voracious reader and acute observer of human nature, Rose is the central narrator of the story of their lives, but there are chapters from Ruby as well. By presenting different perspectives on the same events, Lansens builds Rose and Ruby's individual characters and reveals telling deceptions and resentments. The novel is packed with dramas and conflicts, the specifics of which are unique to the girls' situation but with emotional truths that everyone can understand: the unexpected death of a loved one, the loss of a child, the pain of ridicule and rejection, and the value of friendship. It is not surprising that Whoopi Goldberg's production company has optioned the film rights to Rush Home Road. They ought to snap up the rights to The Girls as well. It is just the kind of book that could be turned into an Oscar contender: entertaining, intelligent and about nine out of 10 hankies on the tear-o-meter. -Malike Wollander