A Spare Life

In poet and writer Dimkovska’s (pH Neutral History) kaleidoscopic, bighearted novel, Zlata and Srebra, twins conjoined at the head, grow up in communist Skopje, Yugoslavia, in the mid-1980s, a period of great personal turmoil for the girls, set against the backdrop of civil unrest and the arrival of democracy and capitalism. Living in a comfortable if unadorned and “radically pessimistic” household with a melancholic mother who “focused on her death, not on her life,” the girls suffer the predictable jibes of their classmates and neighbors, create lasting friendships, excel academically, undergo sexual awakening, deal with the vagaries of extended families, and wish nothing more than to be freed one day of their physical bond to one another. Zlata, the more bookish of the two, narrates for the both of them. The plodding first half is populated by dozens of characters, shadows who brush past Zlata and Srebra, leaving relentlessly negative impressions on the twins. In those sections, the author contextualizes their lives more than necessary—though those stories anchor the characters deep in their Macedonian heritage and their faith, adding layers of richness and historical perspective as they move to London in the late 1990s for risky, life-changing surgery—ending with Srebra’s falling in love with Darko, the son of a wealthy architect and vice president in the opposition party. That and subsequent relationships drive the book’s action. Zlata, too, finds her soulmate, and through her persistence in the face of multiple tragedies she becomes the strong, willful, independent woman that her mother and her sister could never be. With the passage of her own twins into adolescence, she finally accepts the contentment that comes from appreciating life’s simple pleasures. “Let [the girls] at least eat cucumbers without bitterness,” Zlata muses in a late-night epiphany, “and when they grow up, may they drink only sweet coffee.” (Oct.)