Her: A Memoir - Hardcover

Parravani, Christa

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805096531 ISBN 13: 9780805096538

Publisher: Henry Holt and Co., 2013

Synopsis

Wall Street Journal, "Favorite Books of the Year 2013"
Cosmopolitan, "Best Books of the Year for Women"
Library Journal, "Best Books of 2013"
Salon, "Best Books of 2013"

"Haunting... more than a beautifully written memoir. [A] powerful and raw love letter."―The Washington Post

A blazingly passionate memoir of identity and love: when a charismatic and troubled young woman dies tragically, her identical twin must struggle to survive

Christa Parravani and her identical twin, Cara, were linked by a bond that went beyond siblinghood, beyond sisterhood, beyond friendship. Raised up from poverty by a determined single mother, the gifted and beautiful twins were able to create a private haven of splendor and merriment between themselves and then earn their way to a prestigious college and to careers as artists (a photographer and a writer, respectively) and to young marriages. But, haunted by childhood experiences with father figures and further damaged by being raped as a young adult, Cara veered off the path to robust work and life and in to depression, drugs and a shocking early death.

A few years after Cara was gone, Christa read that when an identical twin dies, regardless of the cause, 50 percent of the time the surviving twin dies within two years; and this shocking statistic rang true to her. "Flip a coin," she thought," those were my chances of survival." First, Christa fought to stop her sister's downward spiral; suddenly, she was struggling to keep herself alive.

Beautifully written, mesmerizingly rich and true, Christa Parravani's account of being left, one half of a whole, and of her desperate, ultimately triumphant struggle for survival is informative, heart-wrenching and unforgettably beautiful.

About this title

About the Author

Christa Parravani is a writer and photographer. Her photographs have been exhibited internationally, and are represented by the Michael Foley Gallery in New York City and the Kopeikin gallery in Los Angeles. She has taught photography at Dartmouth College, Columbia University and UMass, Amherst. She earned her MFA in Visual Art from Columbia University and her MFA in Creative Writing from Rutgers Newark. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, the writer Anthony Swofford (Jarhead) and their daughter.

Reviews

Parravani's memoir of losing her indentical twin is a doppleganger haunting made real, but as a reader, clearly, I too felt archetypally haunted. her is Parravani's account of the mental breakdown she suffered following a starker-than-usual identity crisis: She could not look in the mirror without seeing the face of her sister's corpse. Parravani's grief is compounded by the fact that she must do alone what the twins had been struggling, while alive, to do together—"fighting for the privilege of having an individual voice and of living a life apart from each other." her is so brutal that it genuinely feels like a separation, one that before the writing of this book could not have taken place. —Heidi Julavits

*Starred Review* Few of us see ourselves in a living reflection, knowing “me” literally and figuratively through “her.” Cara and Christa Parravani were inseparable, identical twins bonded by a ferocious love that protected them against an abusive father, a militaristic stand-in dad, sour romantic relationships, and sometimes even each other. “We knew who we were: We were best friends. We were enemies. We were all we had.” Cara’s violent rape, hardcore drug addiction, and personality disorder frame the book’s primary trauma, but are, perhaps, trumped by Christa’s struggle to survive when half of her—Cara—dies. At the very least a memoir, Her is more an homage, a form of therapy, and a declaration of independence from an unsustainable survivor’s guilt. Concise and captivating, Parravani’s prose paints her phoenix-like transformation such that the reader feels the flames of her fire. A poignant, book-arcing metaphor illustrates Christa’s battle to accept herself without a mirror image. Initially a photographer, Parravani captured her observations and her twin with pictures. Years after Cara’s death, in a final attempt to claw free from depression, she writes. No longer a passive watcher of her own life, Christa authors this twin’s memoir, and thus her future. Raw and unstoppable, Her illuminates the triumph of the human spirit—both individual and shared. --Katharine Fronk

Edition details

• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0805096531
• ISBN 13: 9780805096538
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320