Twelve-year-old twin Jewish girls separated at a young age during WWII are reunited in this fairly flat story from Vogiel, author of Invisible Chains
and Friend or Foe?
In 1949 England, Zeesie Lipstein fantasizes a career playing the violin, but in light of her mother's strained circumstances, she must be content with a few lessons. Neither she nor her mother know that her lost twin, Adèle Lejeune, is alive in France, unaware that she is Jewish and forced by her lazy "parents" to labor over violin lessons and play lucrative professional venues to support the family. When Adèle conveniently stumbles across her twin's Jewish school while performing at a concert hall nearby, the ending is a foregone conclusion. The prose is problematic, with too many qualifiers and a copious use of exclamation marks (one page alone contains 13). Much of the story is "told," rather than "shown," and it's a stretch for the reader to believe that Zeesie knows nothing of her lost twin, since they were already three at the time of separation. The text is liberally salted with Hebrew/Yiddish terms that add color but are not always defined in the otherwise helpful glossary provided. Although most of the characters are underdeveloped, Vogiel admirably allows Adèle's imposter-mother to become more multifaceted toward the end of the book. Overall, however, the lackluster writing and contrived twins-separated-at-birth plot make this novel a disappointment. (Mar.)
