PAMREADER: Guest post: My literary obsession with twins by Niki Valentine

27 July 2012

Guest post: My literary obsession with twins by Niki Valentine

I am delighted to welcome local author Niki Valentine, who has written a guest post about the theme of twins that runs through her new novel Possessed. I live tweeted my thoughts as I read Possessed. My tweets, plus my review of the book are below this post.

My literary obsession with twins by Niki Valentine

I’ve always been fascinated with twins. I think we all are.

There’s something unsettling about two people who look so similar and we all want to hear both how different they really are, and all about the weird synchronicities they experience.

All twins seem to have these stories and I can’t help thinking there must be something to it.

I’ve been trying to write a novel about twins, one dead, one surviving, for years.

It is such a constant theme that I’ve often wondered if I had a lost twin in the womb.

Back in the 70s, when I was born, ultrasound scans were not routine; I would never have known.

I have been mistaken for a twin for a lot of my life.

I had a sister just a year younger than me and, even though I was always a little taller than her, we were asked frequently if we were twins.

We were almost as close as twins for a large part of our childhood too, I think.

I picked up a new ‘twin’ at University. My best friend was a similar height and build, similar colouring and, again, we were asked all the time if we were twins. On one occasion, the bloke who’d asked us argued with us when we said no. ‘But you must be!’

The odd thing with my University friend was that, again, we were extremely close and there was an odd connection. We finished each other’s sentences, like an old married couple.

It was even weirder than that, in the end.

We had these strange conversations, consisting of sentence fragments, looks of recognition, and not talking. I knew what she was going to say before she said it nearly all the time.

We’re still good friends but live in different cities now and this connection is lost.

But it was truly bizarre.

I remember standing in a museum looking at a completely abstract sculpture and it reminding me about a programme I’d seen, funnily enough, about Siamese twins.

I turned to my friend to ask if she’d seen it and got as far as ‘did you’. She looked at me and I knew she had, and that she’d been thinking about it too.

It was such an odd experience and I can honestly say that I don’t think how well we knew each other explained it entirely. There was too much we didn’t need to say.

There’s no doubt that identity, as a theme, has been very much on my mind writing about twins.

I can’t help wondering how you ever truly know who’s who when you are friends, or even family, with identical twins.

Twins admit they swap and that even people very close to them don’t necessarily notice.

I’ve also always been fascinated with twins and relationships, affairs. If someone falls in love with one twin, isn’t there a huge danger that he or she will feel strongly for the other too?

I know this is a massive fantasy for many people too. So that was something I wanted to explore. And, of course, there’s the worst case scenario as a twin, that of someone dying who is almost a part of you and the gap that would leave.

I’ve been working on and off for years on a story about a twin who has died and the one left over, who tries to replace her missing sister with a very close, slightly similar looking friend.

My initial attempts were literary fiction, more overt in the exploration of identity, more self-conscious.

As soon as I sat down to plan my second Niki Valentine novel, everything fell into place.

The idea of a spiritual possession or, at least, characters believing this might be happening, was so much better as a way to explore these themes and this storyline. It was as if I had been planning this novel for many years without even knowing it.

Twins do seem to be something novelists write about a lot. From Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Fred and George Weasley, Samneric, literature is riddled with sets of twins.

One of my favourite novels, Kate Atkinson’s Behind the Scenes at the Museum, contains several sets. It seems that many writers are fascinated with them.

Scientists like to work with twins because the genetic similarity allows them to explore the effects of nature and nurture, genes versus experiences. I suspect that us writers are attracted for very similar reasons.

Book description for POSSESSED:

Who do you trust when you can no longer trust your own mind?

Emma's life has always been a struggle, and now she's been accepted at a prestigious music school, she is determined to excel. But when the impossibly chic twins, confident Sophie and quieter Matilde, come crashing into her life - surrounding her with champagne and parties - they demand Emma's full attention.

Then shy Matilde commits suicide and shockingly, her identical twin Sophie flourishes. Now odd things are happening to Emma: blackouts, waking up in strange places, bizarre dreams. Something, or someone, is consuming Emma's mind. Terrified, Emma begins to doubt everything and everyone around her, especially the beautiful Sophie...

Possessed is currently available for download to kindles. The paperback edition, published by Sphere, is due to be released on 25 October 2012.

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27 July 2012

Guest post: My literary obsession with twins by Niki Valentine

I am delighted to welcome local author Niki Valentine, who has written a guest post about the theme of twins that runs through her new novel Possessed. I live tweeted my thoughts as I read Possessed. My tweets, plus my review of the book are below this post.

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