Pete Croatto

In the introduction to One and the Same, journalist Abigail Pogrebin admits that writing a book about identical twins was something she was loath to do, equating it to “volunteering to do a public striptease. Because being a twin goes to the core of who I am and I was wary of examining that.”

Thankfully, Pogrebin avoids a literary bump’n’grind, instead merging interviews, research and memoir into a fascinating look at the lifelong dynamics of twins. Along the way, she freely admits that she and her twin sister Robin, a reporter for the New York Times, have drifted apart. That revelation gives the book an interesting slant: while interviewing other twins, doctors and her friends and family, Pogrebin gauges her own relationship with Robin. This is more than just journalism; it’s a search for personal clarity.

At the same time, Pogrebin is a good reporter on two fronts. First, she is able to get her twin sources to share personal, sometimes heartbreaking, information about a special relationship: “There’s a closeness that we have—even if it isn’t spoken—that my husband can’t duplicate,” one tells Pogrebin. Second, she examines myriad issues, both medical and social, without confusing the reader or deflating the personal tone. Pogrebin’s first-person narrative, coupled with her thirst for knowledge, makes for an immensely satisfying, enlightening read on what too many people dismiss as a genetic gimmick.

Pete Croatto is a freelance writer based in New Jersey.

In 1942, New York Times war correspondent Byron “Barney” Darnton died while covering World War II in the Pacific. His son John Darnton was only 11 months old when Barney was killed by a piece of shrapnel.

The younger Darnton’s Almost a Family, in which he traces the irrevocable effects of his father’s death, can best be described as an investigative memoir. Darnton spends the first half of the book describing a childhood without a stable male influence before devoting another chunk to recreating the memory of a man he barely knew. Overall, it’s a poignant look at one man’s efforts to put the pieces of his shattered family back together.

After Barney died, the parenting responsibilities fell to John’s mother, Eleanor. The family’s unexpected second act starts promisingly before a failed news service and raging alcoholism cause Eleanor to unravel, forcing John and his older brother, Bob, to adapt. Before their mother’s recovery, John is shuffled to the homes of sympathetic relatives and neighbors, forced to become independent far too soon.

The author turns out just fine, becoming a novelist and a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the New York Times, his father’s beloved stomping grounds. Darnton then uses those award-winning reporting skills to reconstruct his parents’ past, especially that of his father, who displayed an unquenchable thirst for women and was ill-prepared for the events that unfolded on his last day.

What makes Almost a Family so attractive despite its flaws—the younger Darnton’s newspaper days slow the narrative, and the shift from memoir to reporting is distracting—is that no matter how many questions you ask or how much research you uncover, the dead can’t be defined. “We spend our time upon the earth and then disappear, and only one-thousandth of what we were lasts,” he writes. “We send all those bottles out into the ocean and so few wash up onshore.”

Darnton’s search for answers isn’t weepy abandonment entertainment; it’s the real deal, and one from which many readers will gain solace.