Atmospheric and rich in detail, this is a story of identical twin boys. I loved the whimsical quality of the writing.
Many thanks to Light Publications and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

A fun read with lots of irony. It felt like a modern fable replaying old Jewish jokes but with a modern spin.

Thank you Netgalley and Light Publications for access to this arc.

The other books about The Village life of Chelm – a small village sometimes in Russia, sometimes in Poland, and occasionally in a few other countries given the politics of Easter Europe – are filled with short stories that knit together in various ways to tell a whole. All the villagers wander in and out of them and they can be read in any order. This book, however, is much longer and follows the lives of a pair of twins – Abraham and Adam Schlemiel.

We start with Rebecca Schlemiel expecting her first child as she and her husband haul the furniture of their small cottage around trying to make room for the lovely cradle that carpenter Jacob has made. As labor hits her, Jacob rushes off to fetch Mrs. Chaipul, the village midwife/doctor/healer. Of course things go wrong – it’s Chelm after all. Before 24 hours have passed, two boys have been born but to much different fates because of those pesky politics mentioned earlier.

I enjoyed being in Chelm again and revisiting with characters whom I feel I now know well. Abraham and Adam are mischievous boys who delight in playing (slapstick) pranks while their put-upon parents and other “Chelmers” use village wisdom to sort things out. The whole book is tightly plotted and the wrap up depends on all the previous things, many of which were mentioned two hundred pages ago. That’s fine and good. But there was also a lot of what seemed to me to be extraneous fluff stuff that sank like Mrs. Chaipul’s “lead sinker matzah balls” slowing the pace to glacial. I found my interest waning at times under the abundance of description and, at times, repetition. Perhaps from now on, I’ll just stick to the books of short stories. C

I was given an ARC copy of this book by NetGalley.

5 main categories each of five points for each star— if a category has more than 3 out of five points, I give them the star:

World and Atmosphere ✓ (4/5)
Characters ✖ (2/5)
Plot ✓ (3/5)
Writing style/originality ✖ (1/5)
Enjoyment ✖ (1/5)

In total: 3 stars

World and Atmosphere:

For the kind of story this is, the author managed to maintain the atmosphere brilliantly. I could feel the community and people and story unfold in the air. It was silly and joyous and shifted accordingly as things progressed.

Characters:

I found the characters to be too animated, they didn’t feel like real people to me from the beginning to end. They were fun and engaging sure, they kept you somewhat entertained with how bizarre they were but, in essence to me it felt kind of fake and cartoonish.

That aside though, it was fun to follow these characters, and oddly I did care about what happened to them. Their progression and trials were nice and their changes as they grew up were great. I expected this to be a sort of tense story, but it wasn’t and all the characters fell into place in a nice cohesive way that had you feeling all sorts of things.

Plot:

The plot was engaging and built well, it wasn’t the best in accordance to other’s I’ve seen but for the most part it kept me reading. It was medium paced and coherent towards the overall goal of this book!

Originality and writing style:

I wasn’t really fascinated by the writing, as I’ve said before, I found it a bit exaggerated and comical but overall a fascinating style I haven’t really come across much. It was witty and sweet at times — but also dragged a bit listlessly in my opinion. I can see why it would be a great read for someone with other preferences though, and the potential for this book is looking great!

Enjoyability:

I enjoyed the first bit and then the last half of the book, but not quite the middle? It just was not my cup of tea.

Conclusion:

Whilst this wasn’t really a book for me, I know there’s a big audience for this book out there and I’m grateful to have read it myself. New styles and perspectives are a great way pf broadening my palette, perhaps a future reread might change my opinion entirely.

The Village Twins by Izzy Abrahmson
This book is funny. There are a lot of characters, mostly Jewish. I’m sure we can all relate to some of them, and even without the benefit of Jewish ancestry. We can get caught up in the situational predicaments, the crazy ways of relatives when they join together for various celebrations. This is a people story. I quickly skimmed, but plan to read again at a slower pace. This is not a book to be grazed quickly, it’s easy to read aloud. 4 stars.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the digital advanced reading copy.

The Village Twins by Izzy Abrahmson. I LOVED this book. The story follows twin boys growing up in a small village that’s full of ridiculous locals and their lives and it follows them growing up and all the adventures they get into. I adored all of the characters in it and really cared about what happened to them. The writing is beautiful, funny and it’s flows easily so the chapters fly by. The events the twins find themselves in are hilarious but also press home things like the kindness of strangers and standing on your own two feet. The boys falling in love and how that changes the love they have for each other is done so well and I really do recommend this book. Apparently it’s the first of a series about the village they live in and I will be reading the rest. *given to me in exchange for an honest review*

It took me a while to get into this book and it's writing style, but once I did I loved it. There were short chapters that made this feel like a very quick read. The read is full of vivid descriptions and rich imagery and made for a really enjoyable read.

Because I'm fascinated by identical twins, I was looking forward to reading this novel. Set in a fictionally historical time in a fictional place, this novel plays with (I suppose, obviously) with the theme of identity. Young Jewish parents have identical twin boys who are so similar, in fact, that it's impossible to tell them apart. The boys play on this confusion, and as a pair are known as 'Abrahamandadam'. There is a comic slant to the novel as the boys play pranks, each of them saying they're the other, resulting in searches for the 'missing twin'. There is romance, a war, and a meld of magic realism which is exacerbated by the setting of a village and a bleak forest.

There is a highly detailed narrative style which means that it takes a little while to really get into this and I think it's a novel that requires some tenacity on readers' part. Though it's worth it, it really isn't until about a third of the way in that I started to become invested in the plot and the characters. The pace is a little slow. That said, it's an admirable narrative. My thanks to Netgalley for the copy.