Untwine by Edwidge Danticat

I love Edwidge Danticat and have read almost everything she has ever written. The rumor around Cheshire Academy is that she is coming to read/speak here next year, and I am so excited for that author visit. As a tie-in, my Literature and Performance students will read and adapt some of her short stories for their IB Internal Assessment next year.

Last Friday, I was covering for a colleague whose class meets in the library. I arrived early and browsed the shelves to find something to read while the class was working on peer review. The colors in the cover art caught my eye, and I saw this novel, Untwine by Edwidge Danticat. I hadn't heard of it, but scooped it up, excited to check it out.

My first response, to the first few pages, was: "Is this YA?" Now, I read a lot of YA but that response wasn't a positive one necessarily. It felt YA in a way that was too obvious, too overbearing in the storytelling style, and I didn't like it. The book details the story of two twin girls who get into a car crash with their parents and the aftermath of dealing with that tragic day. One twin, an artist, lives and narrates the story; the other twin, a flute player, is present throughout the novel but dies in the crash.

The opening of the story felt redundant. Didn't I read this story already in If I Stay? Is there a mystery here just like in We Were Liars? I was skeptical, annoyed, disappointed, a skeptical reader. I finished it, though; I had to see if Danticat had something else in store for me, and I grew to like it more than the beginning although it never quite lost the YA feel for me.

I might recommend it to my students to read before Danticat visits, and I might recommend it to my daughter, although the death of the flute player as they rushed to a concert, not wanting to be late, seemed a little close to home. Maybe that was another reason it wasn't my favorite read.