Vanishing Twins

June 4, 2018
Dieterich (Thxthxthx: Thank Goodness for Everything) chronicles her romantic life in this intimate and passionate memoir, which focuses on the link between identity and love. The narrative’s central metaphor comes from the phenomenon of the fetal “vanishing twin,” when “one twin becomes less viable and is... absorbed by the other twin.” Dieterich explores each of her relationships as the quest to become either the viable or absorbed twin. In her husband, Eric, an architect and artist, she recognizes the nurturing compatibility of a partner, observing, “It’s like we’re the same person. We finish each other’s sentences. This is what we’ve been taught to desire and expect of love.” Then Elena, a filmmaker, enters Dieterich’s life. Dieterich develops a romantic relationship with Elena, and in the process explores questions of fidelity, monogamy, and the malleability of sexual identity. Dieterich’s self-exploration is also informed by her experience as a ballerina, as when she observes that the dancers in the George Balanchine ballet Agon never “merge their bodies into one and become set dressing.” Like her relationships, the structure and style of the book explores unconventionality. Dietrich writes in short passages that could be read as prose poetry. The narrative, though, is seamless, as she traverses a period of uncertainty and questioning into comfortably claiming her queer identity.

July 1, 2018
An unconventional literary self-portrait examining the relationships that shaped a writer's identity.Essayist Dieterich (thxthxthx: Thank Goodness for Everything, 2011) fully embraces the art of introspection in this unique memoir. Her prose, dispatched in pagelong ruminations, establishes thought-provoking connections among the multifaceted dynamics of twinning, fetal "vanishing twin syndrome," and the author's physical attractions. As a young ballet student, Dieterich watched herself on walls of mirrors, drawing close to fellow classmate Giselle in third grade. As teenagers, however, she was abruptly abandoned after Giselle acquired a boyfriend, lost her virginity, and broke the "comforting symmetry that had always made our friendship seem predestined." The author admits to harboring a "terror of being alone," so pursuing attachments she wasn't entirely certain would prove successful came easily. She chronicles intense emotional connections to female classmates throughout her college years, just one of several forks "in the road on my sexual map." The author eventually settled into a rhythm with artist and architect Eric, with whom she dashed across the country to cultivate a marriage. As the couple slowly merged into what Dieterich deemed to be a single synergistic organism, the arrangement slowly regressed beneath the weight of her desire for varietal stimulation and discontent with the sameness of a consistent partner. An open arrangement allowed her to probe her emerging queer sexuality further with women, and, through the revolving door of nonmonogamy, the author escaped into the arms of Elena, a filmmaker who mirrored her passion. Dieterich artfully compares her former lovers of both sexes to the sensation of standing too close to a mirror, unable to focus on anything within the blur. In these poetically written episodes, the author ponders the nature of love, attraction, and identity through literature, pop culture, psychology, femininity, and the delicate nuances of being a "beautiful and controlled" ballerina.Graceful snapshots of a life that lyrically coalesce into expressive declarations of identity and intimacy.

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August 1, 2018
In this ethereal and heady memoir, Dieterich paints a stunning portrait of her marriage and her lifelong search for twinship. Growing up, Dieterich stoked a persistent hunch that she may not have been alone in the womb. Throughout her youth as a ballerina, Dieterich sought a symmetrical other in friends, dance partners, and the mirror. The pattern continued when she married Eric in a flurry of passion and symbiosis. The meat of the book explores how her twinship (and open relationship) with Eric evolves and how it is altered by Elena, her lover, and Ethan, her business partner, with whom she spends the majority of her week. In a triangle of shifting balance, these three become the great twins of her life; people whom she matches in appearance, behavior, and thought at different stages of her personal development. Dieterich never explicitly names herself as the narrator, allowing for distance between herself as the author and herself as the woman aroused, for instance, by the idea of a brother-sister marriage. Poignant and extremely hard to shake.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)