Books: Twins' Jinn

WE MARRIED AN ENGLISHMAN—Ruth & Helen Hoffman—Carrick & Evans ($2.75).

Identical twins, handsome Minnesota-born Ruth and Helen Hoffman have been inseparable painters, travelers and lovers of cats. So when in 1935 Ruth decided to marry an English construction engineer in Iraq named Brooks, Helen went along. We Married an Englishman, a much more proper book than it sounds, is their good-humored, comically illustrated account of the two years they spent in a tiny village 300 miles south of Bagdad, where Ruth's fiancé was building an air base.

Their first months were a struggle to build a dining room and studio, whose modernistic...