Amit Majmudar’s memoir, Twin A, is a letter to the author’s young son, Shiv, who was diagnosed with a potentially fatal heart defect in the womb. Shiv is a twin, and the book mirrors this fact by being itself an array of doubles: it draws inspiration from both eastern and western literature and is written in both poetry and prose; its author is both a poet and a medical doctor. Because of all of these pairings, the book sings with a dynamic, lovable energy. And, in spite of its eclecticism, it also maintains narrative unity, because it is at its core the simple story of a father who loves his son.

Twin A’s narrative spans more than a decade, from before the conception of Majmudar’s twins to the more-recent past, when the two boys are teenagers. It focuses mainly on his sons’ infancy and the early years of diagnoses and surgeries that marked Shiv’s (and the whole family’s) life. By the end, I felt as though I too had sat up with Majmudar and his family late into the night, surrounded by feeding tubes and vitals monitors. The author never shies from the suffering inherent in parenting a sick child, nor the immense love. He has discovered the secret of looking life in the face and embracing it, even when in the midst of multiple open-heart surgeries. But this memoir is not grim. Majmudar is a playful, creative author, and his explorations and explanations of medicine and family life are lively, creative, and full of wonder at the gift that is life.

Majmudar’s medical knowledge is one of several facets that make this memoir unique. As doctor and poet, he is able to explain complex and often-overwhelming medical maladies using stories, verse, and analogies. For instance, he describes Shiv’s heart defect with an extended metaphor of “the biggest pomegranate supplier in the country” with roads that were never built, halting vital transportation. Other moments where medicine and art meet are shorter and more tender. At one point, Majmudar and his wife visit a genetic counselor to discuss running tests on their unborn son. Majmudar looks at a pamphlet of illustrations: “I remember staring at the little fluorescent green chromosomes all in a row. They had the look of little Norse runes. The rune a human chromosome looks the most like is X, gebo. The meaning of that rune is ‘gift.’”

Twin A’s prose is interspersed with poems that are windows into the mysterious and mystical moments of Shiv’s early life. These poems provide necessary tone shifts, creating meditative room for readers before they return to prose, the proper form for the practical and urgent world of hospital and home.  One “breathing” moment like this is right after Majmudar receives the news about his unborn twins. He writes:

…Identical! Identical save for the heart, the heart.
This, too, is art.

I see, in asymmetry,
sublimity: the rightness of seas,

mismatched couplets, fingerprints;
of continents, pianos, planets, twins.