Audrey Niffenegger – Her Fearful Symmetry

136. Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger (2009)

Length: 406 pages

Genre: It’s a ghost story, but it’s not really Horror or Fantasy; there are Unspeakable Dark Secrets that people are keeping, but it’s not really a mystery. General Fiction, I guess, for lack of something better.

Started: 09 November 2009
Finished: 11 November 2009

Where did it come from? The library.
Why do I have it? I loved The Time Traveler’s Wife, and a number of lucky-ducks who got an ARC said it was great, so I had to request it.

It’s a ghost story,
twin story, and mystery
all wrapped up in one.

(These haikus would be
most appropriate as a
palindrome, but… no.)

Summary: Identical twins Julia and Valentina Poole are directionless twenty-year-olds when they receive notification that their Aunt Elspeth – their mother’s estranged twin – has died of cancer. They’ve never met her, but in her will she’s left them her London flat and its contents, with the condition that they live in the flat for a year, and that neither of their parents may enter it. The girls find this odd, but lacking anything else to do, they move to London and into Elspeth’s flat, which is located right next to the famous Highgate Cemetery. As they meet her neighbors – including Martin, who creates crossword puzzles and is trapped in his apartment by severe OCD, and Robert, a cemetery tour guide who was also Elspeth’s lover – and adjust to their new lives, they begin to understand that not everything about London is what they thought it would be. For starters, it starts to seem like their aunt’s not entirely gone…

Review: While this book didn’t have the same emotional impact on me as did The Time Traveler’s Wife, it did have the same depth of characterization, the same intricate plotting, and the same compulsive readability. (It also had a very similar underlying theme of “How much can love survive?”) Starting at the beginning, Niffenegger does an excellent job of introducing, distinguishing, and building her characters; they’re all quirky, but no so quirky as to feel like cariacatures. They felt multi-layered and real enough that even when they were making bad decisions, I recognized those decisions as being entirely in character. The structure of the book is also well-done, the parallels between characters and events are always present, lending the book itself the symmetry of the title, without ever being intrusive. There are parts that got as complicated as anything in TTW (I had to make myself a little chart on my bookmark to keep track of one bit), but for the most part, it’s handled smoothly.

The best part about this book, however, was its absorbing, compulsively readable nature. I was sucked in very quickly, and then stayed up way past my bedtime for three nights running. I am apparently a big sucker for the Huge Unspeakably Bad Secrets from the Past plot device, and for three nights in a row, I couldn’t just put the book down and go to sleep… I mean, what if one of those secrets were explained in the very next chapter?!? (As it turns out, the penny finally dropped when I had two minutes left to read before I had to go lead a review session. Argh!) Also nice was that after ratcheting up all of that suspense, the Huge Unspeakably Bad Secrets a) weren’t super-predictable, and b) weren’t disappointing. The ending did a nice job of wrapping up the various threads while still keeping me involved, especially since by the end of the book, the only character I really still liked was Martin (see above re: bad decisions). So, while it didn’t leave me in a soggy puddle of tears like TTW, it was an addictingly good read, atmospheric and subtly creepy without being scary, intricately plotted and themed without being overbearingly Literary, and overall just a fascinating and very enjoyable read. 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: Anyone who likes Victorian ghost stories or the atmosphere of Gothic mysteries should definitely check this out, as should those who are just in the mood for an engrossing read.

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Links: Audrey Niffenegger’s home page

Other Reviews: 5 Minutes for Books, All About {n}, At Home With Books, Bailey’s and Books, Beth’s Book-Nook Blog, The Book Lady’s Blog, Book-a-rama, Books I Done Read, Books on the Brain, Booktumbling, Bookworm with a View, A Bookworm’s World, Devourer of Books, Farm Lane Books Blog, I’m Booking It, The Literate Housewife Review, A Lovely Shore Breeze, The Magical Lasso, Nomad Reader, Nose in a Book, Novels Now, Presenting Lenore, Reviews By Lola’s Blog, S. Krishna’s Books, Sasquatch Radio, Savidge Reads, Sophisticated Dorkiness, Stainless Steel Droppings, Well-Mannered Frivolity, Yule Time Reading
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First Line: Elspeth died while Robert was standing in front of a vending machine watching tea shoot into a small paper cup.

Cover Thoughts: Love it. The branches are wonderfully creepy, especially if you think of them like what the November view would be from one of the graves inside Highgate. Also, it’s kind of shiny/reflective, and I’m kind of like a crow when it comes to anything sparkly.

Vocab: (see the whole list)

• p. 14: “His head was still bowed and he seemed to be intent on each sett in the courtyard as he walked across it.” – a small, rectangular paving stone.
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• p. 121: “She had the general appearance of a small girl who had been riding a waltzer in her nightclothes.” – a fairground ride that consists of a number of cars which are free to spin individually while rotating around a central point like a carousel. (So… a tilt-a-whirl?)