The Trilogy of Two

Juman Malouf's The Trilogy of Two is a strange and magical adventure for 10 year olds about twin girls whose music makes things happen.

What happens

Charlotte and Sonja are identical, apart from a mole on Charlotte's cheek. They were left as babies in a milk pail, and they've grown up in a travelling circus. Their adoptive mum, Tatty, is the circus's Tattooed Lady, and her skin is covered in pictures of seven magical lands.

Their world is a gloomy one. Rain City hasn't stopped raining in years, and the cities are walled off. Everyone else lives among the rubbish heaps outside, watched by brutal guards called Enforcers.

The twins are brilliant musicians, Charlotte on piano and Sonja on flute. But lately, when they play, odd things happen. Curtains blow open. Candles light themselves. Then one night the whole audience floats into the air!

The old fortune teller who taught them to read has a theory. They have magic in their blood.

The twins are the heart of it. Charlotte is bold and desperate to make friends her own age. Sonja is careful, and dreams of being a famous musician. They bicker constantly, but they have a code word, porcupine, that means stop and hug. Isn't that lovely?

The circus folk are wonderfully odd too. There are grumpy clowns, a bearded lady who talks about nothing but her boyfriend, and a monkey who helps himself to anything he can find (including a bottle of wine).

It isn't all cosy, though. The Enforcers beat people, a gang of boys threatens the twins with a club, and some of the grown-ups drink and smoke. A beggar also hints at a house of perfumed ladies, which will sail over most heads.

For a reader who likes their magic a bit dark and dusty, it's a real treat. Most of all it's about two sisters sticking together while everything around them goes wrong.

What to read next

If they love the magic and sawdust of it all, try Circus Mirandus, about a boy whose very ill grandfather was promised a miracle by a magical circus long ago.