Review: Bleak and funny
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 10 26, 2011
In whichever way one looks at this, it is indeed a unique or, rather, somewhat strange story.The protagonists in Thorn in My Side are the conjoined twins Kirk and Wayne. They share between them the most important body parts, however the goddess of luck has decided to bless the one and fail the other. So Kirk is charming, tough and cunning, while Wayne is graceless, shy and weak. Having to share the same body makes them both unhappy, but just the one, the former, can openly express his feelings, and thus he has no problem calling his brother a parasite. The weakling thinks the same thing about Kirk as well, but he just keeps his mouth shut, because he knows his place. However, once there'll come a night that will change everything and scar their lives forever.That night is here and is now. The two of them are at a nightclub, where Kirk is dancing with pride and joy, while Wayne just feels bored. If it was up to him he'd be someplace else, but he has no choice since tonight it's his brother's turn to do whatever he wants. And what he wants is to make love. Knowing pretty well though that no "normal" woman would ever go to bed with them, they, or rather he, Kirk, has to hire the services of a pro called Mindy.The events that are about to follow can only be described as tragic and during them all the differences between the two brothers will come to surface. And it is these differences exactly that brightly illuminate the spot on selection of the particular title for this story, since each one of them is indeed a thorn in the side of the other.The author describes, with not so light touches of humor, the darkness that lurks into the psyches of two men that feel trapped in their common body. It's like the two of them together combine everything that is really good and awfully bad in people. In this case one plus one doesn't equal two; it just equals a shared misery.This is a story that is part-funny part-bleak and so I can't really say that it will be to everyone's taste; in my eyes though it is worth reading.