From Amazon.co.uk
Eve Karpf reads Jacqueline Wilson's
Double Act in this unabridged three-cassette audio book. Identical twins Ruby and Garnet are inseparable. They do everything together and go everywhere together. They love being twins, and since the death of their mother they have been closer than ever, safe in their little world. But when Dad finds a new girlfriend everything in the twins' lives is turned upside down--new home, new school, new everything. And gradually, being twins isn't quite the same anymore.
In Double Act, Wilson brilliantly captures the pain and uncertainty that change can bring. This story of two little girls gradually realising that they have no control over what is happening is both funny and poignant. Wilson shines as the twins begin to accept that things will never be quite the same, allowing her characters to grow and develop as individuals without ever losing sight of the bond that holds them together. Running time is three hours and 40 minutes. --Susan Harrison
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
An unexceptional mix of familiar plot devices, this British import is almost gratingly obvious. Ten-year-old twins Ruby and Garnet take turns narrating, and although their voices aren't especially different, they are meant to be opposites. Ruby is outgoing, Garnet shy; Ruby leads, Garnet follows. Their mother has died long ago, and now their father has a girlfriend, whom they immediately reject. The four move from the city to the country, where the twins are desperately unhappy. Serious issues, like the burdens of twinhood and the difficulties of forging independent identities, become lost amid a surfeit of frothy subplots, including an audition for a TV show and a plan to enter a ritzy boarding school. The narration is frequently cloying, as in Ruby's comments about her father's taste for classic literature: "If we have a look at Dad's book we wonder what the Dickens they're about and they seem very Hardy, but Dad likes them." The brittle nature of Wilson's (Elsa, Star of the Shelter) writing finds its extension in her glib resolution of the conflicts, and the illustrations, rendered as if by Ruby and Garnet, are as flat and unrevealing as the story. Ages 9-12.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
