Tara McCarthy Love Will Tear Us Apart

Love Will Tear Us Apart

Tara McCarthy

Downtown, Sep 2005, $13.00, 320 pp.

ISBN: 1416503242

Renowned singing siblings Flora and Fauna Sparks agree they need a biography written about their unique lives as Siamese teenage twins. They choose thirty something journalist Sloan Madden to tell their story. Sloan sees the assignment as a simple job that will boost her career; so she accepts and moves into the Joint, a Hollywood Hills mansion that the performers share with their dad Fred.

As Sloan begins to know her subjects, she finds the stage harmony is filled with riffs. Instead of loving sisters, the duo battles one another with one of the youngsters wanting to go solo and jealousy is the norm. Surrounded by alcohol and drug abuse, Sloan begins pondering her relationships with her boyfriend, her friendship only with the man she really loves, and even Fred.

The key to this insightful relationship drama is that the tale never loses its prime perspective of focusing on Sloan; this is remarkable because the fascination of the Siamese twins would have made it easier to concentrate on them. The key cast is fully developed especially Sloan, the twins, and their dad. The interrelationships between these four and somewhat between Sloan and her boy friend and her best friend provide readers with a deep character study that grips the audience from the moment Sloan enters the aptly named Joint.

Harriet Klausner