Twins take turns narrating coming-of-age tale
Fanny and Sue
Karen Stolz (Hyperion, $22.95)
06/15/2003 By PAULA FRIEDMAN / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
In Austin writer Karen Stolz’s warm and humorous Fanny and Sue, her second novel (her first was 200l’s World of Pies), she tells the tale of twin sisters raised in St. Louis during the Great Depression. The sisters take turns as speakers to travel from childhood to the beginning of their adult lives, though Ms. Stolz begins the novel by speaking in the third person about them and their family, a strategy that makes sense because of her main characters’ youth. When the twins do take over, they differentiate themselves less by speech styles than by pointedly polarized temperaments and interests. Fanny enjoys drama and risk; Sue remains self-contained and bookish. In the first chapter (Sue’s), she describes Fanny’s behavior after she burned her arm in a kitchen fire: Writing at school was hard with her arm bandaged up and hurting, and sometimes I heard her whimper a little when she was writing essays for Miss Binkbaum, like ‘Why the Pilgrims Gathered for a Feast.’ ‘They just do,’ I heard her mutter. And ‘They were hungry, why not?’ I could actually see Miss Binkbaum fighting off the urge to put Fanny back in the cloakroom…
Ms. Stolz’s strategy of endowing the twins with opposite traits and alternating narratives works for the most part; nevertheless, readers may find themselves anticipating too easily what each will say, and when. The author might have done well to shake up the symmetry a bit more. Still, readers will find much to charm them in the mishaps and the successes of both Fanny and Sue. It seems that one or the other always is in some kind of bind, whether or not it’s her fault. Sue catches scarlet fever and is quarantined for six weeks in the hospital; the ever-impatient Fanny scars her arm with hot popcorn grease. The twins simultaneously hit their teens and more opportunities for mischief (Fanny pretends to be her sister when talking with one of Sue’s admirers). Additionally, the family faces hardships, among them job and food shortages. While many of these trials are depicted with pitch-perfect suspense, their sheer numbers run the risk of numbing the reader. As readers, our feelings tend to build with building drama, and Ms. Stolz too often suddenly and happily resolves problems, leaving the family intact and seemingly unscarred. Fanny and Sue is a charmer, but it’s tempting to start second-guessing each situation as to whether it may – perhaps this time – end with one of life’s usual and unalterable changes.
Freelance writer Paula Friedman lives in Oakland, Calif.