26a
By: Diana Evans
Edition: Large print ed.
Publisher: Windsor
Published: 2005
Place of publication: Bath
Language: eng
Number of pages: 335
ISBN-13: 9781405611961; 9781405621830
Subjects: Twins; Fiction; Families; Multiculturalism
Other titles: Twenty six a
Description: Identical twins Georgia and Bessi live in the loft of 26 Waifer Avenue in Neasden, London. It is their place, one of strawberry-scented beanbags, a view of the apple trees, and very important decisions, and all visitors must knock on the door marked 26a before entering. Downstairs is a less harmonious world: Ida, the twins' Nigerian mother, puts cayenne pepper on Yorkshire pudding and can only assuage her bouts of desperate homesickness with five-hour baths and long conversations in Edo with her own absent mother; Aubrey, their Derbyshire-born father, shouts Haddock! in frustration with his house full of women, and angrily roams the streets of Neasden to escape his demons. Older sister Bel discovers sex, high heels, and organic hairdressing, and baby sister Kemy is obsessed with Michael Jackson. The twins plan their own flapjack empire as the ticket to a shining future for two. But as Georgia and Bessi grow up, discovering the temptations and dangers of London in the 1980s and 90s, the realities of separateness and of solitude crowd in. Each must decide on her own path to adulthood and pursue it -- and discover if she can face the future as only one.