Chang and Eng
by Darin Strauss
List Price:
Our Price: $4.50
You Save: $11.50 (72%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Darin StraussEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2001-05-01
ISBN: 0452281091
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: Plume
Book Reviews of Chang and Eng
Book Review: A tale of conjoined twins : the same and yet different
Summary: 5 Stars
Darin Strauss' fictional account of the true story of conjoined Siamese twins, Chang and Eng, is beautifully written in flowing prose and a novel that will satisfy even critics who doubt that Strauss can do justice to a subject which has even inspired a world famous musical of the same name. Strauss' story contains several conjectural elements but in his expert hands, they become the natural premise for surfacing issues of universal interest including racism, hypocrisy, love, pain, suffering and above all, truth. C & E are freaks of nature. They survived as long as they did as circus exhibits to be prodded, gawked and laughed at. That they are human is often forgotten except by their wives, who even then became disenchanted with their lot. The paradox surrounding the novel is the truth that C & E may look identical but can't be more different beneath the surface. Chang is humourous, quick witted, a showman but weak and eventually falls victim to alcoholism. Eng is intellectual, introverted, sensitive, but pays for a guilty secret that will torment him till his last days. This paradox takes on a different dimension considering the circumstances under which they found their spouses and gained a normal family life. There is the nagging suspicion that Adelaide and Sarah and their parents accepted C & E as husbands and sons-in-law only because they were ostracised and rejected by their society for Sarah's past. The cruelty they meet in civilised America is also cleverly juxtaposed with their childhood days in barbaric Siam whose King ritually beheads dissidents for a pastime. The irony is deafening. This spellbinding tale of C & E ends on a note that will break your heart. The utterance of a shattering truth that will finally provide cathartic release from heartache and pain. "Chang & Eng" deserves all the critical praise it gets. You gotta read it !
Summary of Chang and Eng
In this stunning novel, Darin Strauss combines fiction with astonishing fact to tell the story of history?s most famous twins. Born in Siam in 1811?on a squalid houseboat on the Mekong River?Chang and Eng Bunker were international celebrities before the age of twenty. Touring the world?s stages as a circus act, they settled in the American South just prior to the Civil War. They eventually married two sisters from North Carolina, fathering twenty-one children between them, and lived for more than six decades never more than seven inches apart, attached at the chest by a small band of skin and cartilage.
Woven from the fabric of fact, myth, and imagination, Strauss?s narrative gives poignant, articulate voice to these legendary brothers, and humanizes the freakish legend that grew up around them. Sweeping from the Far East and the court of the King of Siam to the shared intimacy of their lives in America, Chang and Eng rescues one of the nineteenth century?s most fabled human oddities from the sideshow of history, drawing from their extraordinary lives a novel of exceptional power and beauty.
Narrated by Eng, one of a pair of conjoined twins, Chang and Eng is a daring novel that constantly threatens to lose its balance. It's also one that would be hard to believe were it not rigorously grounded in historical fact. Like the (literally) inseparable protagonists of Darin Strauss's debut, Chang and Eng Bunker were born in the early 1800s in a rainy village on the shores of the Mekong Delta. Achieving instant fame as the "Siamese double boy," they toured freak shows throughout China, Europe, and North America. Eventually they settled in North Carolina (of all places), married a pair of sisters, and fathered 21 children between them.
This fictionalized version of their story is narrated by the stronger, more circumspect twin, Eng, who must continually urge Chang to restrain his tears, his burning sexual desires, and his fear of the King of Siam (who has promised to "kill the double-child, the bad omen"). From the beginning, Strauss masterfully delineates the brothers' differences. Yet it's the porous nature of their relationship that will fascinate readers even more. The twins, after all, must always sleep face to face, connected by a fleshy band and the knowledge of their shared monstrosity. The fact that they are neither "he" nor "we" allows the author myriad opportunities for wordplay and psychological riddles. Does Chang love his brother, or does he love himself? When he hates his brother, is it only a piece of himself he is hating? Might the connecting band be its own entity, a pet that the brothers must tend to and feed? When they were children, Eng recalls, the band
was about two inches long, and Chang loved it. He called it Tzon, or ripe banana, and wailed if ever I mentioned severing it. It was more taut then, and would crackle like an old knee when we inched closer or farther apart (no one had any idea the thing would grow with us, and one day allow lateral positioning). I often fidgeted with a stretch of brown leathery skin--a hairy birthmark--midway across it, and also a little brown dot, a charming dinky island that lived, insolently, just free from the shoreline of the larger birthmark.The novel's agile prose is like a smooth, strong current, pulling the twins away from their awkward lives. To his great credit, Strauss spends very little time dwelling on Chang and Eng as monsters, and their freak-show existence surfaces only in short, painful flashbacks--a jeering interlude that the narrator would sooner forget. And Eng's voice is a compelling one, full of quips, insecurities, and jealousy. Indeed, at some moments he seems like a standard-issue Renaissance man, reading Shakespeare in the afternoon, dreaming about pretty women, recounting his extensive travels. Yet the tragic fact remains: no matter how many countries this cosmopolitan visits, he will never have a room to himself. --Emily White
World Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in World Books
Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern Warby Mark Bowden
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2000-03-01; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.17
Price in other shops:
Denying the Holocaustby Deborah Lipstadt
Penguin Books; Published: 1995-03-02; Paperback; Book
Western Europe in the Middle Ages 300-1475by Brian Tierney, Sidney Painter
McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages; Published: 1998-08-21; Paperback; Book
Best price: $106.52
Corrections in the 21st Centuryby Frank Schmalleger, John Ortiz Smykla
McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages; Published: 2006-03-03; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $18.70
Highest Duty: My Search for What Really Mattersby Chesley B. Sullenberger, Jeffrey Zaslow
William Morrow; Published: 2009-10-13; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $4.00
Price in other shops:
Modern Times Revised Edition: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties (Perennial Classics)by Paul Johnson
Harper Collins Publishers; Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Published: 2001-08-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $12.04
Price in other shops:
A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocideby Samantha Power
Harper Perennial; Published: 2003-05-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.97
Price in other shops:
1421: The Year China Discovered Americaby Gavin Menzies
Harper Perennial; Published: 2004-01-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.98
Price in other shops:
"The Good Old Days"by Willi Dressen, Volker Riess
Free Press; Published: 1991-10-21; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $8.10
Price in other shops:
Wild Swansby Jung Chang
Harpercollins Audio; Published: 2004-06-07; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $15.88
Similar Books and other products
Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profitby Robert Bogdan
University Of Chicago Press; Published: 1990-05-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.89
Price in other shops:
When the Emperor Was Divineby Julie Otsuka
Anchor; Published: 2003-10-14; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.44
Price in other shops:
The Real McCoyby Darin Strauss
Plume; Published: 2003-05-27; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.97
Price in other shops:
American Son: A Novelby Brian Ascalon Roley
W. W. Norton & Company; Published: 2001-05-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.85
Price in other shops:
Blue Boyby Rakesh Satyal
Kensington Publishing Corporation; Published: 2009-05-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.12
Price in other shops:
First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers (P.S.)by Loung Ung
Harper Perennial; Published: 2006-04-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.49
Price in other shops:
Half a Lifeby Darin Strauss
McSweeney's; Published: 2010-09-15; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $5.87
Price in other shops:
The Lives and Loves of Daisy and Violet Hilton: A True Story of Conjoined Twinsby Dean Jensen
Ten Speed Press; Published: 2006-09-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.00
Price in other shops:
More Than It Hurts You: A Novelby Darin Strauss
Plume; Published: 2009-06-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.10
Price in other shops:
Half a Life: A Memoirby Darin Strauss
Random House Trade Paperbacks; Published: 2011-05-31; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.70
Price in other shops: