Sometimes you’re not always after a happy ending. It is one of these grandparents that act as the saving grace for Kaeleigh who receives psychiatric help and removal from her abusive home. Peppered through the narrative are phone calls from concerned grandparents who never appear directly on the scene, only by voice. Identical’s brutal, confronting narrative was brilliantly horrific in the blatant way Kaeleigh’s and Raenne’s sexual and substance struggles were depicted, but the conclusion seemed to tie together a bit too neatly. She was effectively seeing a version of her own face in Raenne’s death but could not cope with the overall trauma. The disorder blossomed as a result of the father’s sexual abuse, her mother leaving, and the pressure of seeing her identical twin dead.
Kaeleigh’s split-personality was adopted on the night Raenne died in a fatal car accident. While this is a clever narrative device when you realise at the end that they’re both one person with a split-personality disorder to cope with the father’s sexual abuse… at the time of reading it I was a bit muddled.
Kaeleigh somehow knew what Raenne had experienced the previous day despite not having been present for the instance, nor being informed via dialogue later on. Conflicts at school seemed continuous, as if the twins were a singular person being targeted. Hints were peppered throughout the novel that foreshadowed the conclusion, but at the time of reading them didn’t particularly make sense. The father sexually abuses Kaeleigh who binges and purges her food as a point of control – the only control she has over her body – while Raenne pursues drugs as an outlet. A fatal accident is also briefly alluded to throughout the narrative. Identical focuses on two abused sixteen-year-old twin daughters with twisted priorities.
Hopkins writes verse poetry novels, often featuring split-perspective narratives.
0 kommentar(er)
