Oil and Water
A Novel
Permafrost Prize Series
“A beautifully written, heartfelt story of twin sisters torn in different directions. This transporting and atmospheric novel asks an important question—how do we maintain our deep ties with family and history while also carving out new lives for ourselves? As Fountas shows, familial love is complex, often painful, and has the power to echo across thousands of miles and hundreds of years.”
—Eowyn Ivey, Permafrost Prize judge and author of The Snow Child
Agni and Effie, identical twins, are inseparable until Agni is sent to Greece one summer to visit their grandmother after their grandfather’s sudden death. Until now the more conventional and accommodating of the two, Agni refuses to return to college, choosing instead to remain in their family’s Greek village.
She is drawn into the daily routines and rural traditions that her parents left behind in exchange for the American dream. But the haunting presence of her grandfather’s ghost is a sign of unresolved family grief.
Without her sister’s companionship, Effie abruptly abandons the stability of her life so far and moves to the East Village to live as an artist. But when Agni’s absence become unbearable for her, a personal crisis brings the sisters together again, this time even closer than before.
Alternating between the sisters’ points of view, letters between them, and stories Agni writes in secret, Another Kind of Symmetry explores the sometimes uneasy relationship that children of immigrants have with their parents’ version of the American dream. It reflects on the challenges of living with cross-cultural traditions and how individuals’ different responses to them can disrupt even the closest of relationships.
