Identical Strangers: A Memoir of Twins Separated and Reunited

By Elyse Schein and Paula Bernstein

Book Overview

As seen in the hit documentary Three Identical Strangers - " A] poignant memoir of twin sisters who were split up as infants, became part of a secret scientific study, then found each other as adults."--Reader's Digest (Editors' Choice)

WINNER OF A BOOKS FOR A BETTER LIFE AWARD

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.

Praise for Identical Strangers

"Remarkable . . . powerful . . . an] extraordinary experience . . . The reader is left to marvel at the reworking of individual identities required by one discovery and then another."--Boston Sunday Globe

"Absorbing."--Wired

" A] fascinating memoir . . . Weaving studies about twin science into their personal reflections . . . Schein and Bernstein provide an intelligent exploration of how identity intersects with bloodlines. A must-read for anyone interested in what it means to be a family."--Bust

"Identical Strangers has all the heart-stopping drama you'd expect. But it has so much more--the authors' emotional honesty and clear-eyed insights turn this unique story into a universal one. As you accompany the twins on their search for the truth of their birth, you witness another kind of birth--the germination and flowering of sisterly love."--Deborah Tannen, #1 New York Times bestselling author of You Just Don't Understand

"A transfixing memoir."--Publishers Weekly

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0812975650
• ISBN13: 9780812975659
• Release Date: October 2008
• Publisher: Random House Trade
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.56 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

A great read

I enjoyed reading this memoir of twins who found each other at age 35. I read it in two days because I couldn't wait to find out how their relationship developed and whether they searched for more information about their shared history. This book also includes a smattering of information about twins and twin studies. I highly recommend it!

Fascinating reading

I first saw Paula and Elyse on The View. While this wasn't the kind of book I normally read, I purchased the book and once I started reading, I literally couldn't put it down. The book is jammed with amazing facts about twins but also the details of journies of the heart as the twins "discover" each other. It was nice to be part of the "closure" as the book ended.

"What is it that makes each human being unique?"

Identical twins Elyse Schein and Paula Bernstein were born on October 9, 1968 to a mentally ill mother and were subsequently placed in foster care. Before they reached their first birthdays, the babies were given by Louise Wise Services to kind and loving adoptive parents who had no idea that their daughters were part of a set of identical twins. Fast forward to 2002. Elyse is at loose ends, living a bohemian life in Paris and hoping to become a film director. Although she has known for years that she was adopted, she suddenly decides to apply to the New York State Adoption Information Registry for information about her birth parents. Six months later, Elyse receives a letter from Louise Wise Services stating: "You were born at 12:51 p. m. as the `younger' of twin girls...to a 28-year-old Jewish single woman." This bombshell changes Elyse's life overnight. She has a million questions: Who is her twin, what does she do, and where does she live? When and why were the sisters separated? If Elyse were to contact her twin, would they get along? How could they possibly make up for lost time? Meanwhile, Paula Bernstein is completely unaware that Elyse had embarked on a quest to find her. She is busy with her husband and two-year-old toddler, and has just begun settling in to her new apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Elyse travels to New York and contacts Katherine Boros of Louise Wise Services, who quickly locates Paula and calls her to break the electrifying news. Shortly thereafter, the two women speak on the telephone for the first time. Finding out that they are twins is both an exhilarating and disconcerting experience. Although they look alike and have many things in common, Elyse is a single woman, footloose and fancy free, while Paula is a stay-at-home mom. They aren't completely comfortable with one another, and they occasionally argue. However, the sisters share a common goal--to learn more about their birth parents. They interview a number of individuals and examine written records (some of which are difficult to access), hoping to learn the identity, background, and whereabouts of their "natural" parents. They also want to find out why the people at Louise Wise decided to separate them in the first place. The surprising answer reveals a great deal about the rigid and inhumane attitudes of psychologists and social workers back in the late sixties. "Identical Strangers" is narrated in the twins' own words. Each woman describes her feelings and thoughts at every step in this voyage of discovery. Both talk about about meeting one another's adoptive families, getting used to one another's habits and quirks, and figuring out how to integrate a new sibling into their settled lives. They also include general information from scientific studies of identical twins, and their anecdotes are mind-boggling. Although the writing is far from elegant (the alternating voices of the narrators eventually become a bit jarring),

A Fascinating Book on a Fascinating Topic

This is a fascinating book for anyone who has ever fantasized about finding a long-lost twin...to the authors of this book, separated at birth and adopted by different families, this actually happened. What is surprising and intriguing about the book is that it is not merely a warm reunion story---it lays bare the complications of suddenly discovering someone who resembles oneself and yet remains on some level a stranger. Although it is overall a positive book, after reading it one realizes that the long-lost-twin fantasy isn't necessarily as simple or as glorious in real life as it may be in imagination.

Identical strangers

We loved it and we are so proud of these women. Paula's parents, Marilyn and Bernie Bernstein