Review: Identical Strangers by Elyse Schein and Paula Bernstein

Overview:

Elyse Schein had always known she was adopted, but it wasn’t until her mid-thirties while living in Paris that she searched for her biological mother. What she found instead was shocking: She had an identical twin sister. What’s more, after being separated as infants, she and her sister had been, for a time, part of a secret study on separated twins.
Paula Bernstein, a married writer and mother living in New York, also knew she was adopted, but had no inclination to find her birth mother. When she answered a call from her adoption agency one spring afternoon, Paula’s life suddenly divided into two starkly different periods: the time before and the time after she learned the truth.
As they reunite, taking their tentative first steps from strangers to sisters, Paula and Elyse are left with haunting questions surrounding their origins and their separation. And when they investigate their birth mother’s past, the sisters move closer toward solving the puzzle of their lives.

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Review:

 

I had expected Identical Strangers to focus solely on chronicling Schein and Bernstein's experience discovering the other's existence and reuniting. However, the book also offers quite a bit of scientific data on twins, as well as other cases of twins separated at birth. 

 

I was interested to read about the Schein and Bernstein's struggles to connect. Would these strangers be friends if they weren't sisters?  Can you have no regrets about your separate childhoods, while wishing you were raised together? The inevitable comparisons of their lives. Who has made the most of their DNA?   I enjoyed getting the raw truth from both women. Bernstein was conflicted about Schein's arrival in her life. Schein was excited to discover her twin, but hurt by the lack of enthusiasm on her sister's part.

 

At parts the books read like a movie... The reluctant-to-acknowledge-them biological uncle who was only willing to meet them once; the mystery surrounding their separation and adoption; the revelation of who their mother was; the adoption agency with secrets to keep. I was only reminded this was indeed non-fiction, when Schein and Bernstein remained unsuccessful in their quest to have key archival documents un-sealed.

 

Identical Strangers answers some questions and raises others. Who was their birth mother? What was her fate? Why did the adoption agency separate the sisters? Will Schein and Bernstein ever be able to make up for 35 years apart?