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A review by 600bars
Daniil and Vanya by Marie-Helene Larochelle
2.0
I picked this up because I love this shade of periwinkle so much but I’m glad I didn’t buy it because I don’t want this in my home!
It has an interesting premise— a couple adopts twins from Russia that turn out to be evil. This could go one of two ways, either a meditation on parenting violent children like We Need To Talk About Kevin or camp horror movie style like the Orphan. I could’ve accepted either or a blend, I’ve been reading a lot of books about having kids and the various downsides to different methods of building a family. But things would happen just for shock value and it started to become silly, but it was still trying to be serious so the shocking bits didn’t come off as campy.
Emma has a realization when the babies are young that because they are always looking at the other one, they think that they ARE the other. I’m no expert on child development, but I think that for several months the baby does not realize that the mother is a separate entity. It takes a long time to develop a sense of self. It makes sense that the twins, who didn’t have a mother during a critical period of development, would have their wires crossed. It reminded me of a riddle I heard as a kid: two sisters are looking at each other. One has a dirty face and one has a clean face. The one with the clean face washes her face. Why does she do it? The answer is that they are twins so when they look at each other the other’s face serves as a reflection, so she assumes that if the twin’s face is dirty her own face is dirty. The boys each see the other twin as their own self.
The twins get some perspective chapters and they are written using “we” pronouns because they behave as one entity. This was pretty cool actually. It becomes clear that there is more discord between the brothers than we are initially led to believe, which is interesting to figure out because it is not delineated which twin is speaking/thinking. This unraveling could have been very interesting as we see their sense of self fracture, but it just didn’t work. Eventually we discover that they are not even twins at all, the adoption agency lied!
The book is justifiably critical of the adoption industry. The boys come home experiencing alcohol withdrawal and it’s clear the orphanage was using alcohol to subdue the children. The agency is no help when they ask about this. It’s also critical of those who choose international adoption. Emma wants to exotify Russia and she constantly expresses disappointment when things are similar to her life in Toronto. She expected it to be cold and dismal in Moscow and is surprised to find the weather is nicer there than when they left Toronto. She’s disappointed that their trolley cars look the same as at home, and that the people on the train platform are just regular people. I wonder what she expected to find, some exotic otherworld? To save the children?
In the end, Gregory and Emma give the twins up to foster care. It’s like they’re returning them to the store. I thought of that one youtube couple who returned their adopted autistic son. Of course, simplifying it like that is extremely unfair to Gregory and Emma. I'm not sure what most people would do if they had children as violent as Daniil and Vanya. There is obviously not enough support for parents of children who need extreme amounts of help. But this book doesn’t feel like a meaningful exploration of that difficult situation, it’s just a horror premise set up but it’s not well executed.
This concept has so much to explore. The ethics of adopting, the formation of identity. I just don’t think I've ever read anything that reads as awkwardly as this, both on a sentence level and the pacing overall. The shocking moments were ineffective. Why was there no consequence when Gregory slapped the toddler while Dwell magazine was doing a photoshoot? The name brand dropping was strange too, I get that they are upper middle class without that. The writing is stilted and odd and the dialogue is not believable. It could be a translation issue, because it sounds like the output of google translate instead of real sentences. Even so, the plot pacing is very uneven and I don’t think a different translator could’ve salvaged it. Disappointing.
It has an interesting premise— a couple adopts twins from Russia that turn out to be evil. This could go one of two ways, either a meditation on parenting violent children like We Need To Talk About Kevin or camp horror movie style like the Orphan. I could’ve accepted either or a blend, I’ve been reading a lot of books about having kids and the various downsides to different methods of building a family. But things would happen just for shock value and it started to become silly, but it was still trying to be serious so the shocking bits didn’t come off as campy.
Emma has a realization when the babies are young that because they are always looking at the other one, they think that they ARE the other. I’m no expert on child development, but I think that for several months the baby does not realize that the mother is a separate entity. It takes a long time to develop a sense of self. It makes sense that the twins, who didn’t have a mother during a critical period of development, would have their wires crossed. It reminded me of a riddle I heard as a kid: two sisters are looking at each other. One has a dirty face and one has a clean face. The one with the clean face washes her face. Why does she do it? The answer is that they are twins so when they look at each other the other’s face serves as a reflection, so she assumes that if the twin’s face is dirty her own face is dirty. The boys each see the other twin as their own self.
The twins get some perspective chapters and they are written using “we” pronouns because they behave as one entity. This was pretty cool actually. It becomes clear that there is more discord between the brothers than we are initially led to believe, which is interesting to figure out because it is not delineated which twin is speaking/thinking. This unraveling could have been very interesting as we see their sense of self fracture, but it just didn’t work. Eventually we discover that they are not even twins at all, the adoption agency lied!
The book is justifiably critical of the adoption industry. The boys come home experiencing alcohol withdrawal and it’s clear the orphanage was using alcohol to subdue the children. The agency is no help when they ask about this. It’s also critical of those who choose international adoption. Emma wants to exotify Russia and she constantly expresses disappointment when things are similar to her life in Toronto. She expected it to be cold and dismal in Moscow and is surprised to find the weather is nicer there than when they left Toronto. She’s disappointed that their trolley cars look the same as at home, and that the people on the train platform are just regular people. I wonder what she expected to find, some exotic otherworld? To save the children?
In the end, Gregory and Emma give the twins up to foster care. It’s like they’re returning them to the store. I thought of that one youtube couple who returned their adopted autistic son. Of course, simplifying it like that is extremely unfair to Gregory and Emma. I'm not sure what most people would do if they had children as violent as Daniil and Vanya. There is obviously not enough support for parents of children who need extreme amounts of help. But this book doesn’t feel like a meaningful exploration of that difficult situation, it’s just a horror premise set up but it’s not well executed.
This concept has so much to explore. The ethics of adopting, the formation of identity. I just don’t think I've ever read anything that reads as awkwardly as this, both on a sentence level and the pacing overall. The shocking moments were ineffective. Why was there no consequence when Gregory slapped the toddler while Dwell magazine was doing a photoshoot? The name brand dropping was strange too, I get that they are upper middle class without that. The writing is stilted and odd and the dialogue is not believable. It could be a translation issue, because it sounds like the output of google translate instead of real sentences. Even so, the plot pacing is very uneven and I don’t think a different translator could’ve salvaged it. Disappointing.