Dasha and her twin Masha live for 53 years, sometimes hidden away, sometimes finding friendship and even love. What I liked about this book is the way it challenges social views of disability and 'normality': Dasha's voice throughout cannot be distinguished from any other child/girl/woman (the story is told in the presence tense so she ages as we read), only her experiences of the world differ - because she is a conjoined twin, born in Moscow in 1950.īutler has a fantastic topic here and a life story that deserves to be told. Through the seismic shifts of Stalin’s communism to the beginnings of Putin’s democracy, Dasha and her irrepressible sister strive to be more than just ‘the together twins’, finding hope – and love – in the unlikeliest of places.īut will their quest for shared happiness always be threatened by the differences that divide them? And can a life lived in a sister’s shadow only ever be half a life? Dasha is gentle, quiet and fears everything from the Soviet scientists who study them, to the other ‘defective’ children who bully them and the ‘healthies’ from whom they must be locked away.įor the twins have been born conjoined in a society where flaws must be hidden from sight and where their inseparability is the most terrible flaw of all. They always gasp.’ĭasha cannot imagine life without her sister. I can’t see anything because the spotlight is on us, bright as anything and blinding me, but I can hear the gasp go up. I squeeze my eyes shut and dig my fingers into Masha’s neck where I’m holding her. Based on the true story of conjoined Russian twins, Masha and Dasha Krivoshlyapova, The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep is a tale of survival and self-determination, innocence and lies.

Sounder book