Siamese twins Chang and Eng are like yin and yang. Eng reads Shakespeare. Chang speaks broken English. Eng preaches temperance. Chang is an alcoholic. Eng desires separation. Chang fears it. Joined together at the chest by a seven-inch long ligament, Chang can't imagine not being two while Eng dreams of solidarity. Their history is retold with grace in the fictional account, CHANG AND ENG, by newcomer Darin Strauss.

Strauss, a graduate of the New York University creative writing program in fiction, has written for GQ, Time Out, and a slew of journals, newspapers, and magazines. Then he turned his eyes to one of the most fabled men of the 19th century, Chang and Eng --- taking them out of the sideshow and onto center stage, detailing a rich and intricate life. His first novel, he researched CHANG AND ENG for three years. The culmination of his efforts is a wonderfully creative and disturbing, imaginative and human look at what make makes people 'normal,' what makes brothers brothers, what the definition of love is.  

"This is the end I have feared since we were a child. Eng wakes to find Chang cold against him. The smell conjures the muddy stink of the Mekong in this doublewide bed half a world from Siam. Chang, the left, is dead. Eng is the right. Then I too am done, Eng thinks, and his heart twists like a cluster of wild vines." So begins the novel written from the perspective of Eng. Born in the Kingdom of Siam, they are loved. They are also sentenced to die by the King, for he is superstitious. But when he meets the six-year-old child, he changes his mind and decides instead to exploit them as freaks. "The King continued: 'Confounded idiot, ask the twin: Has the Lord of Deaths sent it here to presage destruction of our kingdom?' 'I don't think so,' I said.”

Soon, an American promoter brings them to America. They become famous. They tour the world. They greet royalty. They are toasted in London. They are stared at by carnival crowds. It is a difficult time in their life. Until they meet two sisters. "Despite years of performing before festival crowds, Chang and I were overcome by bashfulness that day when first we stood before the Yates family, milling about with a throng of strangers at our back and these two blond daughters some twenty feet in front of us. These girls worked to dim the caressing light in their eyes, but it shone against their will in those shy smiles." The brothers marry the sisters. They father 21 children between them.  

CHANG AND ENG is an amazing account on the life of an amazing couple. With sympathy towards these men, with meaningful yet unburdened research, with page-turning prose, with discussions of race, love, gender, and identity, Darin Strauss to a novel is like, well, yin and yang, a perfect match.  

   --- Reviewed by Jonathan Shipley


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