Samantha Stone
Book Review
A review of Sam and Joe Eichner’s novel Our Greatest Work (Akashic Books). Purchase the novel directly from the publisher here.
In the classic play The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde calls memory “the diary we all carry about with us.” But memory isn’t perfect—it never has been—and we all know well enough that one person’s memory doesn’t mirror another’s, even if that person is, in other ways, your mirror.
As an only child, and a generally lonely person, I’ve always been fascinated by siblings, twins in particular. In middle and high school, I was friends with a pair of fraternal twins: two individual young women. Looking back, I consider myself to have had three relationships—the one I had with each of them, and the one I had with them as twins. I say this because I often found whenever I spent a considerable time with them together, that I was navigating their sibling dynamic, a dynamic that differed from those of any other siblings I knew. It wasn’t that they weren’t unique; they were highly unique. But they were always known as twins, even when, in ways other than their DNA, they had nothing to do with each other.
Any person we’ve known for an extended period, especially someone we’ve known since before we can remember our (co)existence, has an ample impact on us, whether or not we realize it. For Sam and Joe Eichner, the co-authors of Our Greatest Work, there is an expectation—and sometimes a fear—of being lumped together into one unit, which may explain why they chose to structure their debut novel the way they did.
The real-life identical twins craft fictionalized versions of themselves, writing one work that alternates chapters between each man’s first-person narration. The characters, also named Sam and Joe, take turns as protagonist and antagonist, depending on who is telling the story at the time. At the novel’s start, the twins are preparing to see each other face-to-face for the first time in approximately five years. The occasion for their reunion is, appropriately, their ten-year high school reunion. The reader eventually gets to attend, too, witnessing what any reunion can become: a group of young adults revisiting their not-so-distant past in a way that invites emotional and behavioral regression for reasons not entirely clear. The brothers are no exception. Their maturity seems to fluctuate wildly, jumping from young and impulsive to almost suspiciously balanced and wise within minutes, weeks, or months.
The twins are twenty-eight in the present of the novel, and their lives have gone in different directions—literally, figuratively, emotionally, spiritually, in just about any way imaginable. They’ve spent the better part of a decade recovering from experiences that tainted their relationship. The falling-out begins in high school, when a supposedly well-intentioned Sam goes behind Joe’s back to help him land a lead role in their school musical. Joe returns the favor differently, embarking on a brief but passionate romance with Chloe, Sam’s first love. This pattern continues for several years until the brothers are literally forced to confront their issues, culminating in Sam stabbing Joe with a butter knife during a college semester abroad. It is a remarkable escalation from the usual sibling rivalry, though perhaps not an entirely surprising one given the history of these two.
The novel’s two narratives also operate on different timelines. Joe, an actor, tells their joint life story in real time, during a plane ride to the reunion, after serendipitously finding himself seated next to Anthony Rapp, the original Mark in the 1996 off-turned-on-Broadway production of Rent. (It turns out that Rent was the musical Joe performed in high school). He tells Rapp that Rent “changed his life.” We learn this to be true, though perhaps not in the way Rapp—or anyone—would expect before hearing the full story.
Sam, a writer, begins telling his side of the story six months before the reunion. Unlike his brother, he is not nervously awaiting the event, at least not for the same reason, since he doesn’t think Joe is attending. Sam is given the opportunity, from a mutual friend of both brothers, Isaac, to write a book; he considers writing about him and Joe. This regenerates one of the many conflicts faced between the two, as part of what severs their friendship is not just that they share one romantic partner (because they share more than one), and not just that they share DNA, but that they share everything: friends, artistic aspirations, but most importantly the stories they both want to tell, as the sole narrator. Even when they attempt to distinguish themselves from one another, their lives keep folding back together. Their identities are not merely parallel but mutually constructed, shaped by years of comparison, competition, affection, resentment, and imitation. What happens to one brother inevitably becomes part of the other’s story, whether or not he wants it to.
At times, I found myself confused about who was speaking, which version of an event I was reading, and where the line between the brothers’ voices was meant to be drawn. Given that they share names, appearances, histories, and many relationships, this confusion can make the narrative difficult to navigate. However, I also wonder how much of this is intentional. If the brothers have spent their lives being mistaken for one another, sharing experiences, and borrowing from each other’s identities, perhaps the reader’s uncertainty is an extension of the very experience the novel seeks to capture. The difficulty of distinguishing between them becomes part of the story rather than simply an obstacle to it. Their voices blur because their lives have always been entangled.
Early in the novel, Sam describes Joe’s memories as “hard to put stock in,” continuing that “where I push things away, he draws them in, weaving narrative strands from the clipped threads of memory.” This reference to the other as the unreliable narrator comes into focus when their accounts, particularly that of the infamous stabbing, are juxtaposed. The stories are told and received similarly but not identically. The question of who is telling the truth becomes increasingly complicated because: they both are.
This is where the novel’s greatest strength lies: in the honesty each man offers, especially when his account is set against the other’s. Sam, the writer, and Joe, the actor, approach their shared history through two different artistic sensibilities. Sam wants to shape experience into a coherent narrative, finding the throughline that gives a story meaning. Joe seems more inclined to inhabit the story, experiencing its emotional truths as they unfold rather than imposing an order on them. For Sam, the past is something to be examined and edited; for Joe, it is something to be performed and relived. To be a writer is to contend with the possibility that every story has already been told; to be an actor is to inhabit a story as if it were completely original. Both, however, struggle with the pursuit of originality when being a twin means living with the possibility that someone else can occupy your place in the world, at least superficially. In their case, the competition extends beyond who gets to own the story.
While I loved seeing each twin through the eyes of the other, I also enjoyed learning about them through the eyes of the novel’s supporting characters. Their circle of friends and family (and, at times, Anthony Rapp) offer additional perspectives that complicate the brothers’ competing accounts and remind us that a relationship rarely belongs exclusively to the people within it. The characters are sharp-edged and gritty, reflecting their ages, upbringings, and stages in life. The most memorable wisdom comes from the twins’ mother, who, while not central to the plot, delivers some of the plainest for the characters—and for readers—to consider: “Joe is never as guilty as you make him out to be,” she says. “And you’re never as innocent.” She is talking to Sam in this moment, but she could be talking to anyone.
What she is actually saying is what the novel is saying: we sometimes want to tell ourselves stories that are revised versions of the truth, because that way the memories are easier to process. Sam and Joe have each hurt the other, and both have built their identities around the injuries they believe they have suffered. Yet their mother’s words suggest that neither brother can be understood solely through his grievances. The novel asks whether the brothers can recognize that distinction before their shared history becomes the only thing they have left.
Since so much of the novel unfolds through reflection, and so much of that reflection is challenged by competing memories, I found myself wondering not which brother was right and which was wrong, but whether objectivity is ever truly possible between people who share a history. What makes Our Greatest Work compelling is that it doesn’t attempt to settle the question. Instead, it allows contradictory truths to coexist. Sam and Joe emerge neither as heroes nor villains, but as flawed people struggling to reconcile the stories they have inherited, created, and revised about one another over a lifetime. Their inability to agree on the past does not invalidate either account; rather, it reveals how profoundly the past can change depending on who is remembering it.
By the novel’s conclusion, it becomes clear that memory itself is the brothers’ greatest collaborative work. Like the book they have written together, their shared past belongs to neither of them completely. It exists somewhere in the space between their two voices, shaped by what each remembers, what each forgets, and what each needs to believe. Our Greatest Work is not simply a novel about twins, but a thoughtful, funny meditation on family, identity, forgiveness, and the uneasy relationship between memory and truth. Its greatest achievement is not that it resolves the tension between Sam and Joe, but that it makes that tension meaningful. In a story about two people who have spent their lives trying to determine where one ends and the other begins, the most honest answer may be that neither can ever be entirely separated from the other. Their greatest work, then, is not just the novel they have written together. It is the ongoing, imperfect story of being twins.
Our Greatest Work
Sam and Joe Eichner
Akashic Books
296pp
$28.95
Samantha Stone is a New York City based playwright, educator, and children’s book author. Her work focuses on shedding light on prominent issues through a new lens. She earned an MFA from the Fordham/Primary Stages Playwriting program in May 2018. Her first children’s book, The Kitchen Magician, suitable for readers ages 4-8, was published with Nightingale Books, an imprint of Pegasus Publishers in early 2025. Her plays have been produced and recognized by Rattlestick Theatre, SheNYC Arts, Primary Stages, the Leah Ryan Fund for Emerging Women Writers, Ivorytown Playhouse, and the New York International Fringe Festival. She is the Managing Editor of L’Esprit Literary Review.
