Separated twins are an extremely fascinating research object for scientists because they are ideal to illustrate the "nature versus nurture" debate: what is the deciding factor in a lifetime?, the genes you inherited, or the education you got? According to the first view separated twins would live more or less the same lifes; whilst the second school insists the different contexts (cultures) lead to very different lives. Judging from this book Tessa De Loo seems rather to adhere to the second school: Lotte and Anna, separated when they were 6 years old, definitively lived very different lives, until they found each other again, 70 years later in the Belgian health resort of Spa. Especially the war turns out to have driven a wedge between them. De Loo extensively recounts how Anna, who stayed behind in Germany, underwent the Nazi regime, married a soldier who eventually became an SS-man, and after the war underwent the harsh years of the reconstruction. Lotte was raised by a family member in the Netherlands, saved Jews from the hands of Nazis and developed an outright hatred for all things German. Fascinating, of course. But I don't think that the De Loo intentionally focussed on an experiment around separated twins. That is my impression, since especially Anna can tell her story in full and articulate how ordinary Germans came to rally around Adolf Hitler, how they just tried to live their own lives and overcome the war events and finally also trying to make the best of their lives after the disastrous defeat. To my knowledge De Loo is the first author to give such explicit attention to the German "suffering", long before the wave of scientific studies on the impact of the Allied bombings of German cities. You can feel free to call this a justifiable correction of the unilateral and simplistic story of the justified fight against absolute evil. But for my taste De Loo falls short the other way round: Anna and especially her (SS-)husband Martin are pictured as truly "good" Germans, who are just trying to do well, saints almost; and that is just as simplistic and romanticizing. In that sense, the novel is a bit disappointing. But all in all, an interesting and readable story.
A brilliantly-conceived plot. Lotte and Anna were born twins, in 1916, to German parents. Soon after, their mother dies, then their father. They were orphans at three. Relatives have to raise them. For some reasons, Anna remained in Germany with her grandfather's family; Lotte was brought up in the Netherlands with her uncle. World war two came upon them when they were young adults, one was German whose young husband, a German soldier, was killed in the war; the other was Dutch, who had sheltered Jews, and with the love of her life killed in a Nazi concentration camp. Seventy years later, the twins meet in a spa, both trying to get some relief from their age-induced ailments. Both are past 80 years old. They talk. Mostly of the past. Mostly about the war. The enjoyment I had while reading this was modest. I've been the company of a German Nazi officer who was everywhere during the second world war in Jonathan Littell's "The Kindly Ones" and this concept of good Germans during the second world war is therefore no longer novel to me. I can't help but notice this, however: literature now abounds with those trying to picture the traditional "bad guys" during the last world war in a more sympathetic light (they're doing this not only for the Germans but also for the Japanese and the Italians). First they get their materials from the civilians of the wrong countries and here there can possibly be no serious debate: innocence is everywhere and I do not believe in ascribing a collective guilt upon whole nations. Then they ease up to the common soldiers, and minor functionaries of the war machine, i.e., those who were simply there at the wrong place and at the wrong time, and who tried their best to act as human beings in the midst of atrocities. But after this, what? Is it possible that the time will come, a very long time, that even the likes of Hitler would be completely rehabilitated, like they were just some benign, tragic, misguided, well-meaning geniuses which history had long misunderstood?
Do You like book The Twins (2003)?
I tried and tried, but I just could not get into it. The book tells the story of twin German girls separated at age six after their parents' deaths who, in a chance encounter, reconnect nearly 70 years later. The sisters are the vehicle for showing the impact of WWII from the perspective of Germans and non-Germans. It is slow and plodding at the start and doesn't pick up much steam, until the latter part of the middle as the war nears its end. I found the ending fell flat and I never got a pay-off for making it through. The key message of the book- the War had many victims - was heavy-handed at times, and I wanted to shout at the author, "I get it, I get it." I'd give it a 1.5, but since half-stars are not allowed, I gave it a mercy half star for the middle of the book that gripped me somewhat.
—Kim
Het verhaal wordt beurtelings vertelt vanuit het oogpunt van Lotte en Anna, afgewisseld met gedeeltes uit het heden. Ik vond het af en toe wel lastig om de stukken uit elkaar te houden. De hoofdstuk indeling beperkt zich tot de gedeeltes voor, tijdens en na de oorlog in plaats van een hoofdstuk indeling met als titel de namen van de hoofdpersonen, zoals je dat wel vaker ziet.Bij het begin van het boek was ik niet meteen enthousiast. Ik vond het wat lastig door te komen, maar naarmate het verhaal vordert gaat dat steeds beter. De delen van voor en tijdens de oorlog waren het interessant om te lezen. Vooral het verhaal van Anna vond ik mooi om te lezen. In de meeste oorlogsboeken die ik heb gelezen gaat het om het standpunt van Nederland. Anna's verhaal is dat van de gewone Duitser in oorlogstijd. Ook dat is geen prettig leven geweest. Het boek belicht twee standpunten. Lotte, die ondanks de oorlog best een goed leven heeft gehad, bekijkt alles vanuit de Nederlandse bril. De Duitsers zijn de boosdoener, ze heeft zelfs joden helpen onderduiken. Ze heeft het dan ook moeilijk als ze Anna hoort vertellen hoe zwaar zij het heeft gehad. Maar Anna heeft het als Duitse in Duitsland ook niet makkelijk gehad.In het laatste deel over het leven van na de oorlog zakte het verhaal voor mij een beetje in. Het wordt niet echt meer spannend. Het wordt zelfs een beetje langdradig. Ook het einde van het verhaal verraste me niet. Maar ondanks dat is het wel zo'n boek wat je vanwege het onderwerp zou moeten lezen. Zeker omdat er ook aandacht wordt besteedt aan het leven in Duitsland tijdens de oorlog. Het is wel allemaal mooi in elkaar verweven.
—Kim
The Twins is not an easy book but it is worth persevering with. I wonder if a little is lost from the original Dutch?Anyway the idea of the book is very clever. German twins separated before the war. Anna remains in Germany, marries a soldier and suffers the horrors of war. Lotte in Holland becomes 'Dutch' and sees the evils committed by the Nazis.The sisters meet again in the 1990's and have so much in common except their perceptions of the war. As an English person it was intriguing to view the war through the eyes of an ordinary German.A fine book.
—Richard Duerden
