The Golden Rope (Hardcover)

by Susan Fromberg Schaeffer (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Adrift in a state of "perfect closeness," Doris and Florence Meek, identical girl twins, spend their days chasing butterflies through the Vermont woods, frowning and laughing simultaneously--their mirrored gestures a sign of their uncanny connection. Intrigued by the outside world, Florence trades the luxurious intimacy of twinhood for friendship, marriage, and a successful career as an artist. Feeling inadequate and left behind, Doris settles into a life of self-pity, depression, and despondency that's only fueled by Florence's mysterious disappearance. Only when a writer solicits her help in piecing together Florence's biography, does Doris begin to realize that Florence wasn't all she seemed to be, and that, indeed, she may be the stronger and wiser of the two sisters.

From Publishers Weekly
A seasoned risk-taker in imagining lives outside the framework of her own experience (among her highly praised characterizations are a Holocaust survivor in Anya and soldiers in Vietnam in Buffalo Afternoon), Schaeffer here burrows into the minds of identical twin sisters, Florence and Doris Meek. With imaginative virtuosity, she illuminates the personality traits that make one twin resolve to be free of her mirror image and the other cleave to her sister in the belief that they are one spirit in two bodies. When famous artist Florence Meek disappears from her secluded house in Provence, leaving behind a philandering husband and a grieving cult of "Florentines," who worship her so-called White Paintings, she also deserts her twin Doris back home in America. Moreover, Florence has effectively annihilated Doris by claiming that she has no relatives. Doris's heartbroken reflections and Florence's melodramatic journal entries alternate in the narrative. The pattern of Florence's deadly rivalry with her sister gradually becomes clear, as does Doris's passivity and selfless patience. When, 20 years after the disappearance, Doris finally decides to pursue the mysteries of Florence's life, she discovers some disquieting possibilities. Schaeffer's beautifully inflected prose has an affinity with visual art; rich sensory details and vivid imagery give her sentences an almost tactile quality. She is less successful in making her protagonists entirely credible: Florence may strike readers as too harsh, selfish and intense, while Doris is too shadowy and clinging. Similarly, the narrative is both overwrought and insufficiently dramatic; though a torrent of turbulent emotion is expressed on the page, there is a lack of intrinsic energy to move the story. Toward the end, however, when Doris finally acts decisively, the suspense accelerates and readers will be rewarded with a denouement that helps crystallize the essential question of identity while leaving the central mystery elusive.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 371 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1st edition (June 25, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394588215
• ISBN-13: 978-0394588216
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,607,952 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Does not disappoint, January 25, 2001

By	"mzwatson" (Long Beach, Ca United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Golden Rope (Paperback)

I have been a huge fan of the author since the reading of the book, The Madness of a Seduced Woman. A look into the lives of a pair of identical twins. What makes this book intriguing is the disappearance of one of them. Being famous, the entire world, for twenty years plus, has an infatuation with her and what could have happened to the beautiful and talented woman. The newspapers, however, make no mention that Florence the famous painter, was a twin. Instead, they write that she was an orphan!

This, amazingly, is no surprise to the other (living) twin. She has known all of her life the horror her sister Florence has felt because she was born a twin, plural, into this world. The unhappiness she felt becasue she was born with a constant companionship. Her hatred for the "sameness" that Doris always equated with security. Florence trying desperately to eek out an autonomous existence, even while very young, with the threat that she would take a knife and slash herself in the face just so people would be able to tell them apart from one another.

A very different take on the lives of twins. A story told by the master of description. The chapters short and the book is impossible to put down. A must read for any Susan Fromberg Schaffer fan.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Facinating exploration of intimacy and individuality, December 12, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Golden Rope (Paperback)

It's one of those books where nothing ever quite "happens" but there is so much distance covered. I found the book evocative of those relationships I've struggled to get into and those I fought to get out of.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars interesting and unsatisfying, January 29, 2000

By	Tracy McCoy (France) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Golden Rope (Paperback)

I read the book in 3 days. I was disappointed by the ending. But I very much enjoyed reading it anyway. It's a sort of psychological mystery. Maybe identical twins would get more out of the book. It certainly made me consider how it would have been if I had been born with someone who looked exactly like me. I recommend the book to people who like "belly-button contemplation" books. Readers that like more action would (I think) be disappointed. But it is a book that gives a glimpse into a world from which most of us are excluded - and a world that I believe most of us would not want to live in.