Identical | 
| Author: Ellen Hopkins
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry
Category: Book
List Price: $17.99
Buy New: $10.47
You Save: $7.52 (42%)
New (39) Used (11) from $10.37
Avg. Customer Rating:  40 reviews
Sales Rank: 1169
Media: Hardcover
Reading Level: Young Adult
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 576
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.2 x 2
ISBN: 1416950052
EAN: 9781416950059
ASIN: 1416950052
Publication Date: August 26, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Over 600,000 Feedbacks Posted!!! Brand New, In-house and ready to ship!!! We are a 5 star seller!!!
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Do twins begin in the womb?
Or in a better place? Kaeleigh and Raeanne are identical down to the dimple. As daughters of a district-court judge father and a politician mother, they are an all-American family -- on the surface. Behind the facade each sister has her own dark secret, and that's where their differences begin. For Kaeleigh, she's the misplaced focus of Daddy's love, intended for a mother whose presence on the campaign trail means absence at home. All that Raeanne sees is Daddy playing a game of favorites -- and she is losing. If she has to lose, she will do it on her own terms, so she chooses drugs, alcohol, and sex. Secrets like the ones the twins are harboring are not meant to be kept -- from each other or anyone else. Pretty soon it's obvious that neither sister can handle it alone, and one sister must step up to save the other, but the question is -- who?
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 35 more reviews...
 Another fabulous write November 21, 2008
I was very excited to finally read this book. I had waited nearly 6 months to see this book on the book on the shelves. When i got home, I had nearly read half before going to sleep. Ellen did a wonderful job with explaining the characters thoroughly and giving the book an amazing ending. It came as a huge shock to me, and it was definitely an awesome plot line. I recommend this book to teenagers simply because it does an awesome job of addressing issues facing teens today.
 Raw book November 20, 2008
Identical, by Ellen Hopkins in my opinion is a very raw audio book that is read very deepy real and well by Laura Flanagan. I found the words very distrubing for a young reader. I think it should not be read by a person under 18. This novel is compelling and very interesting, the way the author wove the words to describe a deeply flawed family.
I think the author was showing something in our social stucture that is contray to our outword beliefs and our actual actions behind closed doors. This book would be a good book for a book club and open dialog.
 Beautifully written and dark, but also slow: for Ellen Hopkins fans only November 20, 2008
Ellen Hopkins created a stir in books for teens with her shocking, free-verse books, "Crank" and "Glass," which are about a teenage girl's descent into drug addiction and single motherhood after she was raped. While books about things like drug addiction and teen pregnancy aren't for everyone, they are sadly reflective of the reality many teenage girls find themselves in. "Crank" and "Glass" speak to the hearts of those readers.
"Identical" is similar in style. This is still a book in beautiful free verse, and while the surface of the characters' lives seems perfect, everything under the surface is dark and disturbing. There's sex and drugs and a girl who cuts herself. But this book starts out so slowly, and so much remains hidden under the surface for so long, away from the reader's eyes.
As one famous editor once told a writer, "Lay all your cards on the table." I understand why the book is written this way. It's about things that are hidden deep inside a perfect family--the worst things imaginable. But hiding those cards can make a reader feel frustrated and cheated instead of hooked. A main character knows what these hidden cards are. The writer knows what these hidden cards are. Why then is the reader the only one who doesn't get to see those cards?
I didn't finish this book. I just couldn't. But I have to admit it is beautifully written--like "Crank" and "Glass"--and it should appeal to those who love Ellen Hopkins's writing enough to put up with hidden cards.
Beware the Broken Mirror November 19, 2008
PLEASE NOTE WELL: The five stars are for the author's clearly-manifested writing ability and the reader's thespian talent . They are not an indication of the suitability of this book for a particular young adult (or mature one, for that matter).
Children and young adults are supposed to be exposed to "window books" and "mirror books" to help them become more insightful, better educated human beings. "Identical" is not the sort of window one would wish on another lightly. It goes without saying that incestuous, drug-dependent psychological confusion torments a percentage of families in these United States. If this is a world-expanding insight one wants one's unaffected child to experience vicariously, "Identical" is a brutally-poetic window for fostering it. However, for a specific child in an unfortunate situation, "Identical" might be a lifeline...a profoundly-catalytic mirror. This child will meet Gretta who will tell her/him: "Never accept evil as something you must walk with...something you deserve somehow." In this case, one can only hope/pray that one or more competent, caring, and trustworthy adults are available to help the individual begin sorting it out.
Ellen Hopkins does a splendid job using terse, poetic phrases to convey her characters' confused emotions as they face their tangled, interconnected webs of recursive obsession and guilt that are cast in and around their fine home unadorned with family photos. Likewise, Laura Flanagan gives "Identical" a first-rate reading...highlighting the characters' thoughts and feelings in artfully-subtle ways.
This is, emphatically, not an easy book. For many, it will not be an appropriate book. But it is, undeniably, a well-crafted book with an important, uncomfortable theme. Buyer be aware.
Challenging both in style and subject matter November 18, 2008
Conventional wisdom holds that twins, especially identical twins, share a deeper connection to each other than siblings. This connection goes beyond mere empathy and verges on the metaphysical. Ellen Hopkins, in her latest teen novel, IDENTICAL, uses this idea as a starting point to explore a severely dysfunctional family whose twin daughters are in physical danger and emotional crisis.
Raeanne and Kaeleigh Gardella are the teenage daughters of two successful parents: dad Ray is a prominent judge and mom Kay is expected to win an upcoming senatorial election. The Gardella family is busy, with Kay mostly on the road campaigning and Ray working long hours. The girls have school to occupy them, but while Kaeleigh is involved in typical extracurricular activities, Raeanne spends most of her free time with her drug dealer, smoking pot, drinking and having sex. At home, both girls self-medicate, drinking from their father's bottles and emptying his pill bottles. It soon becomes apparent why: ever since a tragic car accident years ago, Ray has been sexually abusing Kaeleigh.
The twins respond to the abuse, as well as their father's alcoholism and their mother's emotional abandonment, in different ways. One rebels and tries to find power in relationships with men while numbing herself with drugs and alcohol; the other tries to avoid or discourage her father with overeating and emotional passivity while also numbing herself with substances and finally cutting herself to control her own body and the pain she is in. On the outside they seem like an ideal family as long as they all keep up the charade. But several changes in their lives make it impossible to pretend any longer that all is okay in their home.
Their mother is away more and more, and while the girls each begin new relationships with young men, they find out, when their grandparents contact them after many years, the events that so damaged their father. Soon, everything is spiraling out of control for both young ladies and they turn increasingly to drugs and sex, cutting and overeating. Finally, the tension is released with a frightening act and a surprising and astonishing realization. Friends new and old will be there to help pick up the pieces, but in the end, the twins have a steep and difficult road to recovery.
Hopkins's intense and graphic tale is told in non-rhyming verse. Kaeleigh and Raeanne take turns narrating the story with poems that often mirror each other, playing with repeated words and meaning. Some poems are visually styled, depicting the school bell, teardrops, broken hearts, keys and the bottle that symbolizes Ray Gardella. Despite these contrivances, the book is readable. It flows well and the back-and-forth between the girls' voices makes sense throughout, though by the end readers will see it is actually essential to the story.
IDENTICAL is challenging both in style and subject matter. It is literary yet written in a real, relatable (though sometimes cliched) voice. The subject matter, and Hopkins's handling of it, requires mature readership. The book is not without its flaws, and although the ending may be a tad far-fetched, the main point --- about the damage wrought by abuse and secrets --- is well-taken and important.
--- Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman
|
|
|
