GOD’S FOOL

Another absorbing and poignant first novel (after Darin Strauss’s Chang and Eng, 2000) about the life journey of the first Siamese twins in recorded history.

Slouka (stories: Lost Lake, 1998, etc.) begins his tale in Civil War North Carolina with Chang, the point-of-view character here, reflecting on a life spent bonded to his brother Eng. The fresh images and fascinating allusions in his narrative bring to vivid life Siam, Paris, London, New York City, and the American South during the first half of the 19th century. Chang first contemplates the day over fifty years before when he and his brother, joined at the shoulders by “a small, fleshy bridge,” horrified midwives in Siam. With scant attention to the ways the boys accommodate each other, Chang remembers their warm childhood. When a typhoon takes their father’s life, the maturing twins are forced to accept an entrepreneur’s offer to become a traveling theatrical attraction in Europe. Parisians regard them as beautiful, a special gift of God. Chang falls rapturously in love with one of them, Sophia Marchant, while Eng patiently reads on at Chang’s side. Then a friend suggests to Chang that Marchant’s attraction springs from a fetish with the abnormal. The devastating news follows that the twins are destitute, their managers having vanished. Fleeing to the fetid streets of London, the two grub for coins by allowing passers-by to touch their attachment. An agent for P.T. Barnum rescues them, offering work in New York City. Here, Eng’s growing preoccupation with religion threatens the brothers’ bond, as does the oncoming Civil War. The conflict between them over bringing slaves into their homes escalates into a physical quarrel that leaves both of them nearly dead. Yet when Eng ultimately comforts Chang, bereft from the disappearance of his beloved son in the war, their brotherly bond survives.

Splendid, with notable film potential.