Our Greatest Work

A first-of-its-kind novel about identical twins barreling toward an epic showdown at their ten-year high school reunion—cowritten by identical twins. 

OUR GREATEST WORK OPENS 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.