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SRJ's Page Turners – 'One' by Sarah Crossan

An emotional roller-coaster you want to get straight back on when you realise the ride's finished.

By SR JamesPublished 6 years ago 3 min read
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Hello, procrastinating student/night owl/bored insomniac/person who didn't mean to end up on this page, and welcome to the first in my new series of book reviews: SRJ's Page Turners, coming at you every two weeks.

The series is basically going to be me egotistically assuming that my opinion on a variety of novels actually means anything to you. Welcome!

Psst...by the way, there are no spoilers in this article!

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One by Sarah Crossan is a book that I read by chance. I didn't seek it out after reading a rave review; I didn't even know who Sarah Crossan was until four days ago. I picked up One on a trip to my local library. Often, I'll scour the internet looking for books in my favourite genres and make a list, then pick up whichever ones happen to be there when I head. Four days ago, I did something I do a little less often, which was to blindly wander between the stacks and pick up things I liked the look of. In other words, I set out to deliberately judge a book by its cover. Sue me.

One caught my eye because it was stamped as "Teenage Reading" but sat in the general fiction section, and because someone called Jenny Downham urged me to. Literally. "I urge you to read this book" —with her name below—was printed on the spine. Being a frequent patron of libraries and bookshops, I've seen my fair share of endorsements on covers and spines and below synopses, always telling me that I "MUST read this book!!!" They're always so damn insistent that the book is incredible that I get the impression they're trying a bit too hard to get me to read it, but the gentle persuasion of Jenny Downham appealed to me, so the book came home with me.

It only took me three days to read—I read both quickly and frequently—but that isn't to say it's simple. Constructed in loose, blank verse format, the story is narrated by Grace—a conjoined twin who likes fruit tea and wants to climb a tree before she dies. Her twin, Tippi, whom she is joined to at the hip, inhales coffee as if it's oxygen and has a self-proclaimed bitchiness to her attitude.

We follow the girls through very "everyday" things; school, friends, love, family—things every teenage girl deals with as she grows up. What makes it so unique is that we are learning about how such seemingly-mundane activities are navigated by two teenagers literally joined at the hip, and the way that join effects the people around them.

Dad drinks every day, Mum loses her job, Sister is anorexic and the family is broke—all while these two twins feel the guilt of the medical bills their family must pay to keep them alive and healthy. Mum will skimp on every cost possible—making a greek salad without the almost-essential-to-recipe Feta cheese—but never Tippi and Grace's medical bills, including psychological therapies.

Crossan did an immense amount of research for this book—referencing famous conjoined twins throughout, speaking with medical professionals to get the health complications of being conjoined correct (though as Crossan mentions in the Author's Notes, all cases are unique and the exact ones Tippi and Grace experience are slightly hypothesised based on her research), and used an amalgamation of the life experiences of real-world conjoined twins to portray how Tippi and Grace feel about being attached to one another for life and how people outside their home treat and perceive them.

One is an incredibly moving story, from learning about the difficulties in their home lives to how the girls eventually come to the decision to do something they never wanted to do in order to contribute to the family financially. The relationship between Grace and Tippi is beautiful and sheds a much-needed new light on how "singletons" —people not physically joined to another person—view, treat and think of conjoined twins. Proving that all conjoined twins need, want, and deserve is to be thought of as the two separate people they are—while they may operate as one physical being, there are two souls and minds housed in that one body.

Buy a copy of Onehere if you're in the UK, and here if you're in the US. I urge you!

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About the Creator

SR James

Conservative-hating feminist who writes about pretty much whatever pops into her head. Big fan of dead trees with tattoos. Twitter @SRJWriter

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