What does it mean for someone to have a double? That is the broad premise of this book, and its a lot broader than it first appears.

Klein’s doppelganger is another author, Naomi Wolf. Both began as liberal and feminist darlings, before “Other Naomi” (Wolf) became a proponent of various consipracy theories and hanging out with right-wing influencers. The two Naomis starte being confused with each other within social media, to the estent that Klein almost starts to lose her own sense of identity and becomes increasingly obsessed with tracking the confusion. (I was darkly amused to check Wolf out on Wikipedia and find that the page starts “Not to be confused with Naomi Klein” – and vice versa for Klein’s entry.)

There’s a certain feeling of narcissism in the account. Maybe Klein is affected so much because she and Wolf both have such curated on-line personalities, so that when Klein’s is intruded upon it feels like a personal attack. Would someone with less commitment to media be so affected? – well, I have to say I hope I never personally find out, because it comes across as a very destabilising experience.

Klein does take a broader view of the pheonomenon of “doubling”, which at one level feels unnecessary ad extraneous to this book but that I found quite fascinating in its own right: the idea that doubles appear in lots of circumstances for those with (and even without) a life in the public eye. For an author it’s natural to be worried about how the “double” that is one’s written work is interpreted and re-interpreted after it’s been published, without your control, and how this spills-back on to how people interpret everything you write from then on. Some of the examples feel a little contrived, others quite plausible.

So this book is both a personal memoir and a deeper exploration of a person’s relationship to their own work and life. Both sides are valuable and well worth reading.

4/5. Finished Sunday 2 March, 2025.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)