Love and Loss Both Loom in “Twice Lived”

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Joma West utilizes a high-concept premise to amplify the importance of family and mother-daughter relationships in her newest novel Twice Lived. This is ultimately a story of two girls. Canna is a social butterfly with a close-knit friend group in her high school and a mother who also crosses over into the category of “friend” when necessary. Lily is a quiet and self-serious teen who generally has trouble keeping friends. Canna is an artist who is adventurous and prone to drink from her mother’s liquor cabinet. Lily is buttoned up and precise, making her botany hobby perfect for her preference for solitude. One would never guess they are the same person—literally.

In the world West creates, there are “normal” people and there are shifters. Shifters are people who transfer, teleport, or “shift” from one existence to another. Canna and Lily are one person, divided—physically the same person but living separate lives on either side of the shift. Life becomes infinitely more difficult to bear as they grapple with the discovery of a ticking clock counting down to one or both meeting their end.

Historically, shifters “settle” before reaching adolescence. Their shifting ends as randomly and inexplicably as it begins and one life is essentially terminated leaving loved ones devastated at the abrupt loss of a child. Because Canna and Lily have been shifting well into their teens, specialists on both sides of the shift have developed interest to study and observe the girls to build on the limited research of the shifting phenomenon. Their shared reality begins to falter when they learn that shifting for so long without settling in one place or the other could mean mental deterioration for them both.

The premise of randomized shifting with the looming threat of demise points a unique lens toward the idea of family, loss, and grief. Canna’s mother, Georgia, is a single mother who throws herself into her nursing job to avoid thinking about her daughter settling on the other side. Lily’s family consists of two married parents and a younger sister, but her mother Cynthia uses alcohol to soften the edge of her paranoia. Shifting is the compelling vehicle that causes West’s readers to consider the crushing knowledge of there being a 50/50 chance of losing your child and you’re anxiously awaiting the results of the coin flip. Imagine a pregnancy test, but in reverse.

Aside from the dark cloud looming over every page of the novel, West also forces readers to consider life more certainly. When a feud brews between friends because of a cute boy at their favorite café, Canna feels a sense of urgency to help mend the relationship as her window of existence closes. Lily essentially experiences love at first sight with a girl on the train who later becomes her confidant as the details of her shifting come crashing into the foreground. The novel is less about the exploration of the life of shifters (or the science of shifting) and more about the inevitability of life and the tendency to take it for granted. How would one live differently if given a damning hint of the future? Does one respond with denial or acceptance? Is one given license to hide in fear or live courageously? Canna and Lily seem to choose the latter when faced with these questions, though not without consequence. Georgia and Cynthia are forced to make similar decisions and their choices directly affect their relationships with their daughters.

An underlying theme of this story seems to be about connection to other people. Mothers to daughters is the obvious connection, but also the idea of individuals to the world is under examination. Georgia and Cynthia are introduced giving testimonials at their respective support group meetings for the parents of shifters. Georgia, who only has her daughter and her job, ends up connecting with someone from the group whose son settled on the other side of the shift. When the family seeks Georgia and Canna’s help getting a message to their son, the mystery element, while compelling, is given short shrift (there could have been an entire chapter dedicated to working out the details of finding the boy and delivering a message from his other family). Lily manages to discover love despite her self-restricted life of only school and plants—she doesn’t interact with many people outside her family. Canna reconnects her friends after their falling out. Cynthia is more present with her husband and their other daughter while dealing with the potential loss of Lily.