Twin+A+Memoir

= = = = =Twin: A Memoir =  by Allen Shawn Monitor: Mrs. Holly King

Dear Readers,

Welcome! I look forward to hearing your thoughts about this wonderful book. To put your brains in gear, enjoy the following resources:

__**Book Description (Amazon)**__
 * A heartbreaking yet deeply hopeful memoir about life as a twin in the face of autism.**

When Allen Shawn and his twin sister, Mary, were two, Mary began exhibiting signs of what would be diagnosed many years later as autism. Understanding Mary and making her life a happy one appeared to be impossible for the Shawns. At the age of eight, with almost no warning, her parents sent Mary to a[|residential treatment] center. She never lived at home again.

Fifty years later, as he probed the sources of his anxieties in //Wish I Could Be There//, Shawn realized that his fate was inextricably linked to his sister's, and that their natures were far from being different.

//Twin// highlights the difficulties American families coping with autism faced in the 1950s. Shawn also examines the secrets and family dramas as his father, William, became editor of //The New Yorker. Twin// reconstructs a parallel narrative for the two siblings, who experienced such divergent fates yet shared talents and proclivities. Wrenching, honest, understated, and poetic, //Twin// is at heart about the mystery of being inextricably bonded to someone who can never be truly understood.


 * __Additional Resources__**

[|An Interview with the Author]

[|NPR's Interview with the Author]

Let's start chatting!

Holly King