The Inadvertent Twin

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''This is a book that breathes insidiously in the reader's mind long after the back cover is folded over... It facilitates our self-realisation, all the while tightening the noose of inevitable mutual-obliteration about our ethnically-defined necks.'' - Carol Ballantine

Sunday, January 11, 2004

Another flattering review, this time from one of the Sunday broadsheets. After waiting for months for the book to come to the attention of the wider world, I am now hoping that the hype will end soon. Eoin can no longer cope, and is now living in the shed at the bottom of my garden, having reached breaking point when he found a journalist hiding underneath his bed, hoping to hear some of the poetry he is rumoured to recite in his sleep. I myself am coping well enough, keeping busy waking badgers from hibernation and training them to do my bidding. The New York Times is expected to print a review in tomorrow's paper, which should be quite interesting. Only time will tell whether The Inadvertent Twin will test the patience of the US art world, which is notoriously childish.

Reviews
Changing the Face of Children's Literature
The Inadvertant Twin" by Eoin Keegan and Sharon

In the aftermath of 9/11, no medium is free from the demand for a response. Children's literature has been slow to address the darkening horizons of modernity, characteristically cowering in the shadows of tired
franchises and empty fantasies. It's hardly surprising that the answer, when it comes, comes from such a dark and sinister corner.

Discredited children's writer Sharon has ended her 2-year silence to give us The Inadvertent Twin. There was an unforgettable outcry surrounding her last publication - which was removed from shelves just hours after its release upon the discovery that fragments of fibre glass had been inserted by the author (and unbeknownst to reputable publishers Scholastic) in order that children would appreciate the sensations of eponymous heroine The Girl With A Skin Complaint. Her next work would be strikingly challenged to placate those still baying for her blood, while keeping on side the few fans who maintain that her genius is simply misunderstood.

Sharon's choice of collaborator is quite devastating - a youthful ex-everythingoholic from Dublin, Keegan has in fact produced nothing of worth in his short artistic career, although the rumour some years ago that he had secreted scandalous photos of certain artistic luminaries in some of his more banal pieces, saw his entire locus being bought up in a frenzy that astonished the art world in the heady months of June and July 2001. What can we expect from such a curious team? Darkness certainly, bleakness even. A willingness to engage with the taboo, since both have fallen irrevocably into the mire of the unacceptable, and surely society is unwilling to ever accept them back within its inner circle. Cultural literacy, and indeed indifference have also characterised the previous work of both collaborators. And of course, one would expect the pages to seethe with the reported sexual tension of the two writers.

Readers will be surprised by what greets them. Ostensibly a mild fairy story with a trace of knowing sarcasm, The Inadvertent Twin almost entirely fails to shock. This rather, is a likeable and warm piece about an elf caught in a quest to discover her name. This reviewer was surprised to find herself won over by the guileless charms of the little elf and her beloved cat, and the warm cynicism of the elf's romantic ideals. But this is a book that breathes insidiously in the reader's mind long after the back cover is folded over. The elf's quest for her identity is doomed from the start, because in our new world order, identity is the ultimate double-edged sword. It facilitates our self-realisation, all the while tightening the noose of inevitable mutual-obliteration about our ethnically-defined necks. The forest of the tale bubbles with tension between scarcely-sketched characters, each failing to understand its own purpose or motivation. The book is peopled by confused ciphers, uttering 20th century wisdoms that are hollow and misunderstood. There is no agency in this story, only blind adherence to an inevitable narrative that nobody (least of all the reader) can perceive. The tragic downfall of our postmodern heroine will devastate children, but is this really a children's book?

The great triumph of The Inadvertent Twin is in its layout. 20 pages of exquisitely designed text are followed by 20 pages of illustration, also a collaboration between Sharon and Keegan. No necessary connection is made between the two, and in the gap between what we imagine while reading the story, and what we see afterwards, exists the tale's real power. The illustrations are brutal, dark and terrifying. The medium is not confirmed anywhere on the publication (certainly not on the review copy anyway), but I would be very surprised if that maroon was achieved without the use of human blood. As to the vicious evil of the cat's face (a pastiche of the faces of Osama Bin Laden and Pope John Paul); the superimposed blind eyes in the faces of all the figures, and the background pastiche of a forest in which the trees are composed of famine victims... This book won't sell, of course it won't. It won't accomplish any success on the Christmas market. But it is art. Oh yes, it is unquestionably art.

Carol Ballantine is professor emeritus of linguistic determinism post-End Of Humanity in the William Walters University of North Cavan. She writes for TV and radio, and has a regular column with this publication.

posted by Shazzle 2:10 p.m.
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Saturday, January 10, 2004

The hype surrounding The Inadvertent Twin began months before the book was even completed. The review below appeared a week before myself and Eoin had even decided upon the full name of the primary character, and mere days after we had chosen the colour of the title font on the front page. I laugh in the stupid faces of the so-called "press" (although some of them can be quite nice). It's the new journalism! Predictive reviewing! This review comes from Morag Keshtall, a Scottish journalist of the lowest calibre.

"The new collaboration between Eoin Keegan and Sharon will leave even the most eagerly excited fans gasping with delight. Their treatment of the most esoteric of themes is, as always, an exercise in novelty and originality. There are those who may find certain scatological facets bordering on the pornographic; but to do that would be missing the exquisitely expressed point. A point that is delivered with style and sharp certainty.

Not so much writers as artists, the Keegan/Sharon team challenge our expectations of the novel as a format, and overturn our critical faculties, rendering this reviewer at least utterly speechless. Their power to thwart the ordinary and stifle the mundane is a thing of immeasurable importance in a literary scene that so frequently threatens to choke in its own stagnation. It is Keegan's very quixoticness, blended with Sharon's unique quotidiatudism that makes this pairing both startling, refreshing, and yet curiously familiar. If it contained words, I would say that this novel is nothing short of essential reading; being as it is an entirely fictitious fiction, I can only suggest that readers hurry to consume it before its cover is finally blown."

The "press" have been camped outside my door ever since the prefaces were previewed. I did attempt to post up a brief statement on this weblog last night, concerning Keegan's latest foray in to the land of the illegal, but Blogger.com was mysteriously unavailable. I won't be making any comment concerning this, other than to imply that they probably did it on purpose so that our artistic voice couldn't be heard, and that I'm on to them and the government.

posted by Shazzle 2:10 p.m.
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Thursday, January 08, 2004

Welcome to this, the weblog about the publication of my first collaborative children's book, The Inadvertent Twin, which is being published following a gala twin-lauch in Dublin and London this weekend, on Monday, 12th January 2004, cleverly just missing the Christmas market.

For the last three years or so, I have been working on a new genre of children's writing, working in collaboration with the controversial Irish artist and raconteur Eoin Keegan.

Below, you will find an exclusive preview of the preface to the book, written by myself and my collaborator Eoin. Tomorrow, when we get the first press reaction, I'll be publishing that here. In the meantime, do enjoy the authors' introduction to The Inadvertent Twin

PREFACE BY EOIN KEEGAN-
"When I was presented with the opportunity of engaging in a collaborative work, it arrived at a telling moment in my own career. I had reached a turning point in my art, and I was beginning to doubt the merits of my previous work. My engagement in shock art, the rows of piglet heads attached to the dead bodies of stray cats, the life size replica of a living room which I had carefully filled with papier mache models of various grandmothers, all gained admirable critical success, and after extensive gallery viewings were eagerly bought into private collections, but I began to feel that this work, in some indefinable way, was somehow jaded.

When the acclaimed children's writer Sharon turned to me as the ideal partner for a magical work intended to reclaim lost innocence, I was suddenly very moved, and felt that this was the right thing to do. So abandoning the various papier mache models, pots of glue and spare animal parts, I engaged in what has been the most magical transformation of my life, and working with the astonishingly talented Sharon has been an honour I will treasure for ever."

PREFACE BY SHARON -
"When I heard about Eoin Keegan's financial troubles, I was of course very keen to help out in any way I could. Those speeding tickets do tend to take their toll, and of course the prostitutes aren't going to pay for themselves. I feel that this represents a new direction in my work, which was previously littered with stories of speaking trains and flying hedgehogs - and there was also the children's work.

The difficulty that we first experienced at the beginning of our collaboration was quickly overcome following Keegan's brief spell in rehab / time spent at her majesty’s pleasure. it has been, for me, an important and life-changing path to take, and I for one am very grateful that this work exists. I am sure that, one day, within this very story, the cure for AIDS will be found."

posted by Shazzle 2:09 p.m.
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