Identical (Hardcover)

by Ellen Hopkins (Author)
Key Phrases: Wild Turkey, Grandma Charlotte, Grandpa Gardella (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal
Grade 9 Up—Identical teen twins Kaeleigh and Raeanne share a picture-perfect California life that is rank with dark, dangerous secrets under its surface. Their mother, who is running for Congress, leaves them at home with their father, a district court judge who is addicted to liquor and OxyContin. Daddy regularly molests Kaeleigh, using her as a stand-in for his absentee wife, and controls every aspect of her life. Raeanne sees every detail and reacts to her father's favoritism by acting out sexually and getting high on pot whenever possible. Written in free verse from alternating viewpoints, Identical tells the twins' story in intimate and often-graphic detail. Hopkins packs in multiple issues including eating disorders, drug abuse, date rape, alcoholism, sexual abuse, and self-mutilation as she examines a family that "puts the dys in dysfunction." The tension builds slowly and subtly, erupting in a shattering climax of psychological disintegration and breakthrough that reveals the truth about the twins and their father's own childhood secrets. Gritty and compelling, this is not a comfortable read, but its keen insights make it hard to put down.—Joyce Adams Burner, Hillcrest Library, Prairie Village, KS
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Review
Hopkins’s gift with free verse reaches new heights in this portrait of splintered identical twins. . . . Kaeleigh and Raeanne maintain distinct voices throughout as they wrestle with psychic damage and an astonishing, devastating realization. Sharp and stunning, with a brilliant final page. [starred review]
—Kirkus Reviews (Kirkus Reviews )

Hopkins's verse is not only lean and sinuous, it also demonstrates a mastery of technique. [starred review] (Publishers Weekly )

“A powerful interpretation of an emotional story.” (Booklist )

“Hopkins' word sculpture and verse patterns are just as keen as ever, creating shapes and secret messages. . . One thing is for certain—you won't soon forget this story.”
—The Trades (The Trades ) --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Young Adult
  
• Hardcover: 576 pages
• Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry (August 26, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416950052
• ISBN-13: 978-1416950059
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 5.2 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (79 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #4,425 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #2 in	Books > Teens > Social Issues > Sexual Abuse
  #8 in	Books > Teens > Social Issues > Drug Use & Abuse > Fiction
  #9 in	Books > Children's Books > Issues > Drugs

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Is this really what we want to feed to kids?, May 6, 2009

By	sedgwick (new york) - See all my reviews

I'm sure the title of this review makes me sound like a little old lady thumping her Bible on the plains of Kansas, but I'm actually a young-ish tattooed lady in NYC who is no stranger to the dismal realities with which kids are faced. That said, do we really need these books to perpetuate such despair, and the author to lick the bottom of the proverbial barrel several times a year in order to cash in on the most depressing, salacious topics she can dredge up? I read Glass and thought it was decent, definitely a page turner, although I was depressed as all hell when it was over. I went to the bookstore tonight to check out the rest of her books, and spent about an hour sitting there going through them all. I was dismayed to find that one is more depressing than the next, and that they're all written in verse that is often cutesy, in the shape of letters or houses or keys or what have you. Upon looking at Identical, I began to think the "poetry" thing is an excuse for an inability to sustain prose. There's such an obvious formula at work here: make the characters as disturbed as possible, put them in the psych ward/crackhouse/bed of a drunken father, etc., write 600 pages of dashed-off fragments, give it a one-word title and an ominous-looking cover, lather, rinse, repeat. While reading Glass, I found it a little TMI, but then recalled reading Go Ask Alice as a teenager and thought, well, okay. But when I picked up Identical and opened to a page in which a teenage girl is trying to figure out what to do about her father's semen all over her hands and her twin sister is lying in the room wishing it could have been her, I found myself thinking...well, see the title of the review. A few more pages in I found an eating disorder, a drug addiction, and a teenager's death. I want to feed Hopkins some SSRIs, place her in a room full of kittens, forbid her to come out until she writes a complete sentence, and march a steady stream of well-adjusted teenagers past her window.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "I try not to look at the girl in the mirror as I pass by", October 19, 2008

By	Linda Bulger (Avon, Maine) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

(What's this?)

Kaeleigh and Raeanne are identical twins, 16 years old, mirror images; physically alike but in personality very different. They are half of a deeply dysfunctional family. Their mother, a politician running for office in Washington, has left them in every way possible; their father, a judge, numbs himself with whiskey and pills before coming to one daughter's bed while the other alternately hates him for it and longs for his love.

Kaeleigh, soft-centered, binges and cuts herself, can't feel worthy of the young man who loves her; and finds her only common ground with an 80-year-old woman who lives in the residential center where she works part-time. Raeanne, on the other hand, is tough and cold, has sex with dangerous boys for drugs, steals booze and oxy from her father, and purges to free herself from the venom of her past.

The unbearable events that poison the twins' present are rooted in the past, but just how far back? The car accident when they were eight years old, or further back in their parents' youth? The foreshadowing is woven through the present story, and even if the reader glimpses the truth before full disclosure, the book's worth rests not in its revelation but in the escalation of pain resulting from the family history.

I had not read any earlier books by author Ellen Hopkins so I was unprepared for the highly original design concept of this book. Done entirely in free verse in the alternating voices of the sisters, the words on the page are arranged in patterns that reflect the tone of the story. Letters, hearts, teardrops; tight intense verses; jagged word explosions on the page; and most interesting of all, where the story transitions from one twin to the other, the words on the facing pages mesh together like the teeth of a zipper. I found it literally impossible to put this book down and read it in one long session. The originality of design hooked me, but the intensity of the story delivered a punch that will stay with me for a long time.

In publisher-speak, the category "Young Adult" refers to readers approximately 12 to 18 years old. Identical would be better suited for the more mature reader toward the upper end of that range, having explicit scenes involving sex, alcohol and drug abuse, purging and cutting. Any adult wanting to understand the pressures and realities of teen life will find this book enlightening, and for everyone else it's a fast, riveting read; dark, but beautifully paced and crackling with painful truth. Five stars at least.

Linda Bulger, 2008

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars 3.5 stars for a somewhat disappointing book, September 2, 2008

By	Denise "DC" (Missouri, USA) - See all my reviews

I am a high school librarian and I have read all of Hopkins' previous books so I was looking forward to this one and started it as soon as it arrived. After a few chapters, reading about the incest, I was wondering what the purpose of the book was. A friend pointed out that it was a "mirror" book -- meant to reveal how a student could see herself and her life or an event through the eyes of a character and can see how that character acts or deals with a particular situation. Hopefully to encourage that student to take steps to solve the problem. I can't write much more here because whatever I say in response to what I read would be spoilers as the book moves toward a conclusion that just fell short and ended up being somewhat unbelieavable mostly because a lot of the book took place in school or around other people. The supporting characters, especially the mother, are stereotypes and not at all sympathetic. Yes I know that many awful things happen behind closed doors in families and if by reading this book even one girl gets the courage to step forth and tell on her abuser, then I guess the author will have achieved her goal. Other than that, be warned, there's a lot of descriptive sex, drugs, alcohol abuse, suicide attempts, self-mutilation, anorexia and bulimia -- I mean all of these behaviors are exhibited -- and other mature scenes both on and off-page.