Time can be most unkind to some writers. Cool and sexy now may look gauche and gaudy in a quarter of a century.
Ken Follett wrote “The third twin” twenty five years ago. It was 1996 and on the fifth of July ‘Dolly the Sheep’ had been born. That was the first successful cloning of a mammal and the world was dutifully impressed and naturally concerned. What would it lead too?
And that’s the heart of this book! The title, as it turns out, is quite clever and unexpected! The writing is very readable and turning the pages is no effort at all! Ken Follett is, as ever, imaginative and unexpected.
But……..! “But” is a bad word at this juncture isn’t it? I feel cheap and ungrateful being critical of writers! I long to be a writer myself and i know just how hard hitting the sweet spot is! But……..!
Two things rankled as I sat with the last word of the last page still lingering in my mind. The first one was the ending itself! Was it rushed? Yes, I think it was. There was that embarrassing feeling that my host was was standing by the door with my hat and coat in his hands. Had I overstayed my welcome in “The Third Twin”? Had some magic word limit been reached? Had the evening just run out of steam? Perhaps that hard kernel of gaiety, that Evelyn Waugh observed in the party goers in “Vile Bodies”, had simply cracked?
And the other ‘but’? It’s harder to tie down. No I’m being coy. I know exactly what worried me. It was the male gaze. An undue interest regarding the lingerie worn the two young heroines in the story. And Ken getting inside their heads to flesh out their sexual fantasies. Only the fantasies resembled those of we males rather than those women.
I’m not complaining mind, but it did seem more back then, a good twenty five years ago, rather than just now. But then it WAS written a quarter of a century ago, and I enjoyed the story, so what’s my problem.
At the End of the Day 