Twins: Dead Ringers

by Bari Wood, Jack Geasland

A spellbinding novel of the bizarre lives and shocking deaths of twin doctors bound together by more-than-brotherly love, damned together to a private hell of unspeakable obsessions. An authentic shock era novel of eerie power, suspenseful and tough.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, Queer, Medicine, Suspense

352 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1977

Reviews

[Comus]

You know, sometimes you just really want to read a novel about incredibly handsome codependent twin gynecologists who sleep with their patients and each other's lovers and each other, and descend into the depths of barbiturate addiction, and shit in chairs, and eventually commit murder-suicide. And when you want to read that novel, Twins is there for you.

[Maria Lago · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awwww, twincest

[Bill Hsu · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is of course vintage 70s trash, milking the sensationalistic drug (and alcohol) abuse and gay/twin sex, complete with pop psychology analysis of "the dominant twin" etc. The period cultural and consumerist references are kind of amusing, and the writing is not terrible for this sort of thing.

I actually read this decades ago, when racy gay sex scenes were hard to come by in mainstream novels, and before Cronenberg's Dead Ringers (which was loosely based on it). A little after the halfway point, the problem is we've already seen most of what the twins can do. David picks up guys and manipulates. Michael falls in love with female patients and has affairs. They drink a lot and do a lot of drugs. The rest is mostly soap operatic mechanics, which I can't get excited about. I don't remember much of the novel from my first reading, other than the sordid downward spiral at the end. And it was sordid, and you could hear all the squeaking as Bari Wood milked away.

[S.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was only made aware of this novel after reading a book about David Cronenberg’s films. A book that inspired “Dead Ringers” you say? Better yet, real life twin drug-addicted gynecologists that inspired said book? I knew I had to read this. Of course I went in figuring it would probably be sensationalist entertainment and little more. Is the prose great? Not really. Is it weirdly engrossing and easy to read? Yes. Despite a few problems (one being the homophobic attitudes and slurs…but then again it was the 70s), I enjoyed it quite a bit. I can understand why some people would be put off by the incest between twin brothers, but I’ll admit this element was a selling point for me personally. The psychological power play is portrayed very well, though in the end it’s far more drama than horror. And while “Twins” isn’t much like Cronenberg’s excellent film adaptation, it still has its own merits and I’m glad I decided to get it.

[Juushika · Rating 3 out of 5]

Identical twin brothers are found after their murder-suicide. On the gamut of fiction books about sibling incest, this sits somewhere between a trashy guilty pleasure and gritty and/or profound. It's significantly different from Dead Ringers, the film adaptation: Cronenberg's weird styling, the gynecology fetishism and 80s social critique, compliments the premise and creates a surreal, satirical atmosphere. The book has less absurdity and more cancer--it's less fun, less exaggerated; more unsettling, more nuanced, broader in its anxieties, with a greater contrast between the semi-realist tone and the strangeness of the content; the characters are developed in greater detail, and their relationship is explicitly sexual (which, to be fair, is harder to include in a mainstream film). Both narratives are about taboos, but the book rides a specific tension between an insular, toxic codependency and the inevitable, destructive intrusion of the outside world--and the reader inhabits both parts, glimpsing an interior view from a voyeuristic position.

[Carrie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Checked this one out because it was the iinspiration for the movie "Dead Ringers". This book is so trashy. Delightfully so at times, but yeah. (I'd call this a 2.75 star book. I read the whole thing on the toilet over several months. It doesn't deserve any better bookshelf than teetering on top of the towel rack.)

[Thérèse · Rating 4 out of 5]

i <3 codependency

[BellaGBear · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disturbing, but also oddly compelling

[Gray O’Leary · Rating 5 out of 5]

A novel that aims to answer the age-old question: Is twincest equal to incest or selfcest?

[Katie T · Rating 4 out of 5]

Massive content warning for twincest.
David and Michael are deplorable and toxic. This is a strange and very uncomfortable story. Disturbing, interesting and oh so tragic.

[Bibliophile · Rating 3 out of 5]

Drugs, twincest and medical malpractise sounds like fun, but this was more of a twisted psychological portrait of a pair of dysfunctional gynecologists. I had to read it after enjoying Bari Wood's excellent The Tribe. Not exactly sure how I feel about this one, but I guess it might be useful to know that injecting lethal drugs into someone's hemorrhoids is a good way to get away with murder. And I trust that to be accurate, because the book was co-written by "medical writer" Jack Geasland. SO very curious about what that collaboration looked like.

[Habbas001 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hated this book for the ending but damn it was a thrilling book. I had to contemplate it for 10 minutes before I decided to actually keep reading and hated myself for it

[Francesca · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've found myself in a very odd position with this book, in the sense that I'm not entirely sure if I've finished it or not. I bought a secondhand copy of it on eBay last year when I first watched the Cronenberg movie, then I watched the TV series earlier this year, then watched the movie again then I finally decided to read the book (my cover has the movie poster on the front and was printed in the 80s, shame there's no picture of that cover on Good Reads) and it took me a while to finally get stuck into it and when I had about 100 pages left of the book I realised that it looked like a few pages had fallen out of the back.

I've looked up two different editions on Internet Archive and strangely both of them end even earlier than my edition which creates an even bigger mystery. Do I have a special edition with an extra chapter? Is my chapter cut off? Was this added after the popularity of the movie? It seems to end so abruptly and my edition should have at least 6 extra pages. So if you have an edition which has the scene in the morgue at the end please hit me up in the comments and help me out.

With that out of the way, my actual review. This is really pulpy, lurid family melodrama which almost has nothing to do with either screen adaptation. I would love to see a true to the source version someday, can't believe Cronenberg was such a coward and cut out the most subversive and disgusting theme from the book from his movie, c'mon man you love gross sex stuff. It was both tragic and thoughtful at times and also kind of confusing. It never really tells you how much time passes between "parts" and so much happens that I was always a bit lost and could never really keep track of who all the secondary characters were.

I gathered that years would pass between each section because the brothers would go from living together and then apart, one of them has a kid very off-handedly who is barely mentioned, nearly all the male characters are casually bisexual (but of course would never use that word because it's the 70s) and everyone is just drinking on the job and smoking indoors. What a very strange and compelling novel, it's almost impossible to find any information on the book because the movie has overshadowed it but I think it stands alone as an interesting piece of writing, part exploitation, part airport domestic thriller.

[Zack Clopton · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Twins” by Bari Wood — a horror author of some renown — and Jack Geasland — who has never had another book published, as far as I can tell — was famously adapted by David Cronenberg as the film “Dead Ringers.” But aside from being about twin gynecologists with a disturbingly codependent relationship, the two works have little in common. Wood and Geasland’s book is a far more perverse story of the two twins — “Two bodies, two minds, one soul” as the “Dead Ringers’” tagline put it — attempting to live their own lives while feeling uncontrollably drawn to each other. It tracks a time period of about forty years, from the twins’ boyhood to their middle-age, which necessitates a lot of jumping around in the narrative. Which takes some getting use to. But Wood’s prose is poetic, involving, and blunt when it needs to be. The book definitely draws you in, as more unnerving layers are revealed. It’s really an exploitation movie premise but Wood tells it in a probing, psychological manner. The characters outside of the twins aren’t very well fleshed-out. All the women are emotionally hysterical messes totally dependent on their men. All the homosexuals are depraved. Yet the book definitely pulls you in, circling towards its seasick, unsettling conclusion.

[Adrianna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've been joking that I've been reading a trashy 70s novel, but really that's not far from the truth. What's weirdly interesting about this novel, beyond it's salacious plot, is that the twins (based on real-life twins) were gynecologists. I can't think of ANY novel where the field of gynecology is more prominent. The most heart-crushing scene is centered around a female patient whose husband doesn't think of her as "feminine" anymore due to "female" health issue. The novel felt cutting edge if only for this point of view.

I picked this novel up, long time ago, because I knew it was the source material for David Cronenberg's film Dead Ringers. I love that movie. I will be watching it again within the week. It's a scandalous novel about a set of twins who cannot live with or without one another. It was a compelling novel. My paperback has the full-color Kent and Newport cigarette ads in it, so it felt like a 70s trashy read. The tone was so dark, there wasn't much joy to be had.

[Jack · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s lurid and trashy, but not my type of lurid and trashy. It’s a “Persona” style battle of the wills but with a heaping dose of twincest and an extended subplot where one of the twins has an affair with his terminal cancer patient. It’s a page-turner in the sense that I was morbidly curious how tasteless the authors could get, but probably it’s not something I’ll ever revisit.

[Michaël Wertenberg · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disapointing. I was a huge fan of the movie so I thought I would be of the book as well, but, alas, that was not the case. It sets up a good premise but does not go far enough, focusing on drug addiction and little more.

[Tatum · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bad taste perfection A++. Loved every page, thank you SLC used bookstore that I wasted time in since the hotel wasn't ready at check in. There's something to this that can't be disregarded just because it's ridiculous and horny. early fujo fair too...

[Flora · Rating 1 out of 5]

The book on which "Dead Ringers" is loosely based. Cronenberg didn't need to credit this; it has as little relationship to his ingenious film as Yanni to Mozart.

[Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wonderful book. I really loved this book and I would read it again! Brilliant!

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very naughty guilty pleasure -- I can see how it captured David Cronenberg's attention.

[Tamelyn Feinstein · Rating 2 out of 5]

Skip the book. Watch the movie.

You’re welcome.

[Joe Coolidge · Rating 3 out of 5]

Trashy gay twincest junkie blowout

[Mikepottz · Rating 4 out of 5]

David was 13 minutes older than Michael. As kids the twins wanted to be doctors. They slept in the same bed, they would hug each other and even had sexual relations. They were really like one person. The older they became they would sleep with each others girlfriends. David would drink vodka with orange, Michael would drink straight vodka. They did separate for awhile. Michael would marry and have a child, David was completely jealous. Michael's wife would find them together sexually and now the twins were back together. Taking drugs, their obsession with each other is incomprehensible. 43 years old, the apartment like a children's party. Ice cream, party food, the apartment completely a shithole. Found by police both dead. This is a haunting, gripping immensely sad story of twins unable to live with or life without each other. A bizarre story that only one director could pull off and one actor. You know who they were. Awesome.

[Lex]

Excellent. A Grecian tragedy in midcentury NYC. Perfectly cyclical.

There are many ways to interpret this book. Literally, metaphorically, psychoanalytically. All are interesting takes. Michael and David are one person, they're also not. They represent one man split across two people. They are two people inextricably linked in their similarity.

However, I hesitate to assign them morality by calling one "good" and the other "bad". Other characters spend the book asking what would be if they didn't have a twin. To some extent that's beside the point, but it's also worth noting Michael's behavior outside of David isn't always moral or healthy. He's not a good guy, and I wasn't exactly rooting for him as a "protagonist".

When I finished I went back and reread the prologue. I'm excited to rewatch the movie. Great book.

[DEFEAT · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't think Twins is a conventionally good novel, but it is weirdly engrossing and surprisingly easy and fun to read. I did not enjoy watching Cronenberg's (veeery) loose adaptation and after I've read the book I suspect I’d like the film even less if I ever were to rewatch it.

+I loved the kind of schizophrenic quality of the way she writes Michael's paranoia.
"David was everywhere now. Michael looked around. David's glass was still on the coffee table, and David might as well be there too, sipping bourbon from it and watching Michael try to comfort Kathy. He had really been there even that first night, when Michael believed that he was alone with her, that they were making love in the dark, in private. David would be with them tonight in her bedroom and if they married, David would be on their honeymoon. Michael had never been alone with her, and he never would be."

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a twin, I am always interested in checking out a book or movie featuring twins in hopes it is a thoughtful exploration of the nature of twinness. This is not that. The writers' skills are fairly solid, but it is little more than a relic of 1970s sexploitation featuring deeply unhealthy twins doing horrible things.

That being said, it was not meant to be a meaningful look at twins, but rather, a literary attempt at explaining the lives and deaths of identical twin gynecologists Stewart and Cyril Marcus. They, and this book, were both source material for David Cronenberg's film "Dead Ringers," but it is safe to say Cronenberg had his own body horror take on the sordid material.

Anyway, as another reviewer stated, not horrible, but definitely disturbing.

[Melber · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bizarre is right! If you've seen the 1988 movie Dead Ringers starring Jeremy Irons, the book from which the movie is based won't be too surprising. So even though I knew what to expect, Twins is still a twisted story.

Loosely based on real-life twins, Stewart and Cyril Marcus, Twins is the fictionalized story of brothers and their perverted kinship. As identical twin physicians using their indistinguishable good looks to their social and professional advantage, Michael and David cannot separate themselves from one another - to a degree that it becomes detrimental to their own well-being and to those around them.

I don't recommend this for the squeamish, but if you're looking for a warped, even depraved look at sibling relationships, then this is it.

[2033stars · Rating 3 out of 5]

First 20-35% of the book is incredible. Totally had me hooked. Once I got about halfway I lost interest. The psychosexual themes that provoked me from the beginning fell flat & grew into this weirdly philosophical sleeze that was too heady for its own good. I got bored of the constant back and forth of the twins communicating to each other through their relationships with others.

Their entire lives were a facade of make believe individuality. There are some potent themes & excellent moments. I’m kind of in awe of how Cronenberg took this source material & turned it into a cinematic masterpiece. ‘Dead Ringers’ captures the essence of this novel without falling victim to long winded edginess.

[M · Rating 3 out of 5]

You wouldn’t think what should be just a dime store thriller pulp novel would be as moving as this is, but it is! It’s threaded with Michael’s melancholy throughout and it really is much more than the sum of its parts. Maybe because I’ve read about the twins it’s based on or maybe because both adaptations really delve into this toxic codependency that seemed to plague the real brothers… the whole thing is sad but also really stays with you.