The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins

Title: The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins
Author: Irvine Welsh
Published: 2014 by Jonathan Cape
Genre: Welsh.
Pages: 468


Xmas present 4/4! Biggest in size, and therefore kind of hard to carry around, to work and back, and therefore the last I read. But so very much not the least! I read most of it in two sittings, two nights in a row, too caught up in it to put it down.

Lucy is a personal trainer in Miami who lives, breathes and cusses healthy living (and lots of sex) and fitness. Lena is... pretty much the opposite. They come together when Lucy one night disarms a gunman on the highway and Lena just happens to be there and gets it all on tape. The video goes viral, Lucy becomes famous overnight, and the two very different women end up in a strange relationship which grows more and more obsessive as time and the troubles of the Siamese twins go by.

Lucy and Lena are both pretty... messed up and complex characters. Just when I thought I'd had them figured out, turns out I didn't. And damn it, just when I thought I had the book figured, turns out I really didn't. One bloody big reason why I couldn't put it down the first night of the reading spree, and why I was pretty much sitting on ants at work the following day, waiting to get home to read it (I had a smaller, thinner book with me for work). The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins was pretty much exactly what I'd expect from Welsh, and then some.


   I've got Little Miss SoBe where I want her, a whimpering but defiant mass of wobbly Jell-O, here in my arms. And I feel her letting it all go--the self-hate, the abuse, the anger, the denial, the victimhood, and, very soon, the fat. The embodiment of all that ugly fucked-mind shit. -We're ready, sister, I tell her. -We are ready to start fighting back, and I offer my hand up in a high five, which she at first waveringly, then properly responds to. - Welcome to the Lena Sorenson Escape Committee!