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Her Fearful Symmetry

By Audrey Niffenegger

(99)

| Hardcover | 9780224085618

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Book Description

At last - another brilliant, original and moving novel from the author of "The Time Traveler's Wife". Dearest e, I told you I would let you know - so here it is - goodbye. I try to imagine what it would feel like if it was you - but it's impossible to conjure the world without you, even though we'veContinue

At last - another brilliant, original and moving novel from the author of "The Time Traveler's Wife". Dearest e, I told you I would let you know - so here it is - goodbye. I try to imagine what it would feel like if it was you - but it's impossible to conjure the world without you, even though we've been apart so long. I didn't leave you anything. You got to live my life. That's enough. Instead I'm experimenting - I've left the whole lot to the twins. I hope they'll enjoy it. Don't worry, it will be okay. Say goodbye to Jack for me - Love. Despite everything, e Julia and Valentina Poole are normal American teenagers - normal, at least, for identical 'mirror' twins who have no interest in college or jobs or possibly anything outside their cozy suburban home. But everything changes when they receive notice that an aunt whom they didn't know existed has died and left them her flat in an apartment block overlooking Highgate Cemetery in London. They feel that at last their own lives can begin ...but have no idea that they've been summoned into a tangle of fraying lives, from the obsessive-compulsive crossword setter who lives above them to their aunt's mysterious and elusive lover who lives below them, and even to their aunt herself, who never got over her estrangement from the twins' mother - and who can't even seem to quite leave her flat. With Highgate Cemetery itself a character and echoes of Henry James and Charles Dickens, "Her Fearful Symmetry" is a delicious and deadly twenty-first-century ghost story about Niffenegger's familiar themes of love, loss and identity. It is certain to cement her standing as one of the most singular and remarkable novelists of our time.

Critics

  • HER FEARFUL SYMMETRY by Audrey Niffenegger

    Review by Debbie Lee Wesselmann (OCT 25, 2009) Audrey Niffenegger’s successor to her immensely popular The Time Traveler’s Wife centers around a London cemetery and the people drawn, both voluntarily and not, to its intimacies. When Elsbeth Noblin di ... (read full critics)

    mostlyfiction published on Thu, 30 Sep 2010

  • Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

    Like Henry David Thoreau, Audrey Niffenegger seems to view time as but the stream in which her characters go a'fishing. Her enormously popular first novel, The Time Traveler's Wife, was the story of a man who involuntarily time-travels through his ow ... (read full critics)

    guardian.co.uk published on Fri, 24 Sep 2010

17 Reviews

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  • 2 people find this helpful

    I loved Time-Traveler's Wife. Can't say the same for this. Found it annoyingly self-indulgent for Niffenegger, and not much happens.

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    kmccormi said on Feb 17, 2010 about the Others edition | Add your feedback

  • 2 people find this helpful

    I got so drawn in and the twists really surprised me. I didn't find it that spooky for a ghost story though.

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    Valentine said on Oct 20, 2009 | 1 feedback

  • 1 person find this helpful

    very, very nice ghost story. it feels very gothic and modern at the same time. i liked it and got drawn into the story little by little, the last 150 pages i basically read in one go. you could say it is predictable sometimes, some of the twists of the story maybe are... but i still liked reading it ... (continue)

    very, very nice ghost story. it feels very gothic and modern at the same time. i liked it and got drawn into the story little by little, the last 150 pages i basically read in one go. you could say it is predictable sometimes, some of the twists of the story maybe are... but i still liked reading it. if a book manages to constantly drag me to itself - on the metro, on the tram and today even while i was walking, it means it's good.

    i read some reviews that are critical of the book because it's nonsensical, or unrealistic... but since when are ghost stories supposed to make any sense? the unrealistic twists are part of the whole game, for me at least!
    i liked it, not only because of all the ghost story archetypes in it and the eerie atmosphere that permeates the novel; but also because the characters were interesting, Martin was my favourite.
    this author seems to be very good at writing about loss, at least she was in the two books i read by her - i find what she writes touching and beautiful, and i can really relate to it. a very good read, absolutely recommended!

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    natalia said on Nov 6, 2010 about the Others edition | Add your feedback

  • What a mess of a novel...all started reasonably well, with a death, two sets of twins and the promise of family mystery all dealt out in the opening chapters. But after the premises were efficiently set up, the author seems to have no idea where to take her story. The major character of the ghost wa ... (continue)

    What a mess of a novel...all started reasonably well, with a death, two sets of twins and the promise of family mystery all dealt out in the opening chapters. But after the premises were efficiently set up, the author seems to have no idea where to take her story. The major character of the ghost was introduced rather awkwardly into the stagnating plot, which was as trapped inside this London apartment as itself. A whole chunk of time and space was then dedicated to the interaction with the ghost and the joint exercise of figuring out the logic of the afterlife. This entire portion of the book was thoroughly unexciting to put it mildly.

    When another plot twist finally came, it was so absurd and laughably implausible that you couldn't believe the author really went along with it anyway. What followed was one ridiculous development after another. In fact, the last third of the book is so boring, illogical, substance-less and preposterous it's painful to bear.

    The book is a huge disappointment after Niffenegger's wildly imaginative and fabulous brain scratcher "The Time Traveler's Wife". They are similar in the sense that both deal with the fantastical and absurd, but in this one, you get the feeling that the rules of the ghost world were made up as the book went along and the plans and intentions of the characters also appear totally whimsical, defying all common sense. When the author tried to stir things up in the final part of the book and complicated everything by playing with the identity of the older twins and the failed resurrection attempt, the result is still hopelessly lifeless and not in the least intriguing. Apart from one vividly depicted character who suffers from OCD and is confined within his own personal ticks, there's almost nothing worth salvaging in this fangless, tepid ghost tale.

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    Tony Su said on Nov 28, 2011 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

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