Leanne Dunic felt doubly connected to the 2018 book Vanishing Twins by Leah Dieterich
This interview originally aired on Oct. 17, 2020.
Leanne Dunic is an artist, musician and writer. She won the Alice Munro Festival of the Short Story writing competition in 2015 and is the author of the poetry collection To Love the Coming End.
Dunic is also the composer and singer/guitarist for the indie rock band The Deep Cove, and she is currently working on a new novel.
The book she is currently reading is Vanishing Twins by Leah Dieterich. She stopped by The Next Chapter to tell us why.
"I'm reading this book because I'm interested in the idea of twinning, which is a theme in my own forthcoming book. I was reading it to learn more about her perspectives, about searching for another half and searching for this magical other that completes one.
"The author is writing about her experiences with her marriage, but also as a dancer. She was a ballerina and found herself often looking in the mirror at herself. It was reminiscent of Narcissus in the way that she was looking at her mirror image.
"But also there is said to be another version of the Narcissus myth where Narcissus actually had a twin sister. And the reason why he was looking in the pond was actually for him to try to bring his twin sister back.
"I was moved by the author's experiences with bisexuality. I appreciated her fragmented modular form of the book. And I appreciated how fluid [her writing is], like dance. And you really could tell that she was a dancer just in the way that she wrote.
I'm reading this book because I'm interested in the idea of twinning, which is a theme in my own forthcoming book.
"The author and I have the same initials. I thought that was a funny thing to notice because the book is about looking for this other that has similarities to yourself. And I did the exact thing by noticing that we have the same initials, that we have similar writing style.
"We also both had a crush on Jessica Rabbit growing up."
