Twin peaks; Lori Lansens's second novel brings empathy, grace, and humor to the story of a pair of conjoined sisters.(The Girls)(Book review)

Byline: Eve Macsweeney

A novel sprang fully formed in Lori Lansens's mind after she read about the Bijani sisters, Iranian craniopagus twins who underwent failed separation surgery three years ago, as they were turning 30. Conjoined at the side of the head, "they expressed the desire before they went under the knife that they really wanted to look into each other's eyes," says Lansens, a Canadian novelist and screenwriter. "I found that such a poignant notion."

The Girls (Little, Brown) centers on Rose and Ruby Darlen, craniopagus twins who live out lives both circumscribed and rich in rural Ontario. Written as a concurrent fictional memoir by each twin-Rose, a natural writer, dominates; Ruby interjects her more spontaneous commentary-the novel quite literally gets under the skin of its characters. Rose and Ruby, though they can see each other's faces only in mirrors, can feel the tug of each

other's smiles, the burn of each other's blushes, the throb of each other's headaches. Rescued in the maternity ward by an imaginative and compassionate nurse and her Slovak husband, the twins are raised on a farm to be as independent-or, more accurately, codependent-as possible, adapting their relative strengths to each other's needs and confronting the dangers of the outside world, whether mockery, curiosity, or superstition, from a ...