Alva and Irva

by Edward Carey

Book Overview

Alva and Irva Dapps are identical twin sisters who live in the city of Entralla. Like the Emerald City, Gondal, and Brobdingnag, only one guidebook to the place exists, and this novel is it. Alva is... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679312331
• ISBN13: 9780679312338
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: Random House Canada
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.

Customer Reviews

The Map Is Not The Territory, Or Is It?

Alva and Irva Dapps, eccentric twin sisters, never had an easy life. Their father died the day they were born, when his scandalous malfeasance at the post office was abruptly discovered. Their mother was oddly reclusive. The girls themselves, strangely symbiotic, struggled with their sense of identity, and even more so, with their sense of place. And their city, Entralla, somewhere in--perhaps--Europe, is somehow symbolic of all places, all home-towns, and all sense of belonging. Somehow the twins become involved in making plasticine models of the buildings of Entralla, all the buildings, creating a gigantic model of the entire city. And somehow this comes to have cosmic importance, later, as certain tragic events take place.The book is written alternately as a guidebook for tourists coming to Entralla, and as the memoir of Alva Dapps, the more outgoing of the two sisters. It comes complete with a detailed map, recommendations of where to stay and where to dine, which trolley bus to take to which destination; and the sad inner struggles of two odd and lonely girls who never belong anywhere.Author Edward Carey is imaginative and insightful,but he doesn't always make things easy for his readers. Sometimes the account becomes almost too fanciful, too strained, even for the surreal medium in which he is working. The writing drags at times, especially in the travel guide sections. It was not easy for me to finish this book. However, it was certainly worth doing. Take the book for what it is, an extended meditation on the sense of place, an inquiry into what it means to belong--and you will find the book strangely moving and thought provoking. Reviewed by Louis N. Gruber.

A beautiful book about place.

This is a story of place. And it is one I found particularly touching. You will feel the same if you've ever walked aimlessly through a city's streets as you wondered what it would be like to live there, or - if you lived there - wondered what it would be to leave. Edward Carey has found the perfect metaphors for the alternate yearnings, to stay or go, in his characters Irva and Alva. But reducing them to symbols would be unfair. The warmth of Carey's writing prevents that. The real brilliance of his story, though, lies in how he manages to illuminate every emotional aspect of how we regard the places we are and may go, and he does so in such an unforced and natural way that we've hardly realized the depth of his contemplation by the book's end. His touch is light, but the feeling is strong.The context of a guidebook for the unreal city of Entralla, complete with a street map and a recommended tour, frames the diary of Alva, the identical twin of Irva. As the twins grow up, they grow increasingly apart. Alva longs to travel and Irva turns inward. Alva's threat to leave her sister and their city plays out as the essential betrayal of anyone wanting to abandon their home. But Alva finds a reason to stay a while as she attempts to turn her sister from the retreat into herself, the smallest place there is. They take on the task of miniaturizing the city in plasticine; Alva documents the outside in photographs and measurements while Irva remains inside and sculpts. The tiny buildings "may not have been mathematically accurate, but they were, let there be no doubt about this, emotionally precise." It is emotional accuracy that matters."Miniature things move people." In Carey's world and in real life, it is because the perspective granted by things reduced focuses the emotions we associate with those things. Occasionally we are even made aware of the hundreds of other lives happening immediately around us. When Alva's and Irva's sculpture is reluctantly displayed to a scarred populace, both the smallness and the significance of the peoples' lives are somehow simultaneously grasped. These oppositions of place are difficult to hold in the same hand.When the writer of this guidebook is revealed, the significance of small lives is once again emphasized and along with it the unavoidable bitterness of travelling alone in a vast world. This final revelation is devastating and beautiful in a novel full of contradictions. I don't ever expect to read any other book that so perfectly evokes my own feelings towards the places I have been.

A personal history of Entralla

Edward Carey again manages to write a wonderfully gripping novel. I am not going to go through the whole plot outline of the book as it is all here for you anyway, but the story of Alva and Irva Dapps is more than just a story about twins. It is a story of lonliness and longing, desire and duty, and really it really shows that one seemingly insignificant event CAN have a great impact on society. This novel really takes the readers through an excercise of emotions. Carey makes the reader join in with Alva's tense desire to broaden her horizons, yet we also feel deeply for the pain felt by Irva. After reading this book we are almost able to taste the Entralla buns, and smell the plasticine on our fingers. Reading the story of Alva and Irva and their atmospheric home of Entralla is an opportunity that should not be missed.

What can I say?! Carey can't falter!

Carey's first book, Observatory Mansions, already had me waiting on the edge of my seat for the next one. Alva & Irva did not let me down. His characters are once again lacking in sanity, and as the book progresses, so does this trait. I would say Alva and Irva is a little more solemn than Carey's first novel, but certainly a good read. The last portion had me talking out loud and murmuring, "Oh god. Oh my God. Oh no!" You don't believe the lengths the characters go to to secure themselves against their fears and angers until you are on to the next shock. I am certainly eager for Carey's third.