By Edgar Cantero; Doubleday, July 2018
I’m not sure I’ve ever read a book that has thrown more at me before the first chapter than Edgar Cantero’s newest novel, This Body’s Not Big Enough for Both of Us. There’s multiple retellings of the same scene, told from different perspectives from technically different people (more on that later); the writing shifts between standard prose to a screenplay-style format, interrupting itself to go back and forth between different points within the action; there are femme fatales and neckless thugs and police detectives and private detectives . . .and yes, we have yet to get to chapter one.
Not gonna lie: it’s a lot. But if you can hold on for the ride and suspend disbelief just for a little bit, you may find yourself enjoying this wholly unique and manically fast-paced story of two private detectives trying to solve a string of gang-related murders. “What is so ‘wholly unique’ about a P.I. murder mystery?” you may ask. Well, you’ve probably never read any detective story where the two P.I.’s share the same body, for starters. Adrian and Zooey Kimrean are a fraternal chimeric twins; two distinct, separate individuals controlling different hemispheres of the same brain: Adrian occupying the left hemisphere and Zooey the right. While this may make this sound like a multiple-personalities-type situation, believe me it is not. One of the fascinating aspects of this novel is how Cantero illustrates how the fictional Quain cenoencephalic chimera syndrome actually works for A.Z., and the complicated issues of self-expression and gender identity that arise from the condition.
This Body’s Not Big Enough for Both of Us doesn’t get bogged down in medical descriptions or technical jargon, though; it’s a funny, whip-smart novel told at breakneck speed, inhabited by side characters with enough personality that they are not completely eclipsed by the (understandably) outsized Kimrean. The plot is also equally engaging; figuring out the ending of a book before I finish it is basically one of the downsides of my job, and yet this one kept me guessing how it was going to end until the very last chapters. If you’re looking for a read that’s out of the ordinary and defies expectations at every turn, this is definitely the book for you.
