Our Greatest Work

OUR GREATEST WORKOPENS WITH A PANIC ATTACK, a celebrity cameo, and an antique gun: Joe, an actor, is traveling from Paris to Chicago for his ten-year high school reunion, where he plans to confront his twin brother Sam, a writer.

In alternating chapters from each twin's point of view-Joe writing as Joe, Sam as Sam-we learn of the slights that started, then prolonged, their confounding estrangement. There's the fateful high school production of Rent. An illicit affair set to Death Cab for Cutie. A pathetic act of violence in a Florentine study-abroad apartment. All the while, a mysterious (if idiotic) childhood friend is pulling strings from behind the scenes, his motivations troublingly obscure . . .

As the reunion draws near, a tragicomic series of events conspire to bring the brothers' artistic and romantic entanglements to the fore. In a Parent Trap-esque twist, Joe and Sam switch places, albeit to less-than-heartwarming results. When our protagonists finally collide at the reunion on the banks of Lake Michigan, they're forced to answer an inevitable question: Can either of us truly live while the other is still alive?

Inspired as much by Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Quartet as '90s sex comedies, the Eichners' novel is at once a moving portrait of brotherhood, an antic satire of the entertainment industry, and a profound exploration of what it means to be an original when your very existence threatens to make you redundant.