Take Two

‘Take Two moves beyond the conventions of family memoir, fusing narrative with something like the spirit of a compendium or almanac, gathering up song titles, drawings of household objects, letter extracts, playscripts, poems, and illuminated micro-stories. The book accumulates into a vivid portrait of a family of German and British heritage, set up in post-WW2 London and torn between impulses to close ranks or break apart. It’s a fascinating and provocative act of witnessing, one that offers up new insights and patterns with each re-reading.’ – Michael Loveday

‘Take Two is a collaboration, a shared enterprise. Here we have the memories of two sisters, Caroline and Vivian Thonger (“The mother saw she had a fat child and a sick child”), gathered in scraps and shards to build a fragmented picture of troubled childhood. The Thongers are British-Germans, living in north London after the war – “How ghastly England is!” The darker story, of the German grandparents, is briefly given at the end … It isn't always possible to tell which sister is writing, but that doesn’t matter – or, rather, the blurring is deliberate. So too how their memories connect … As an experiment in family memoir it feels stylistically adventurous.' – Norma Clarke, Times Literary Supplement