Name: Lustrzane odbicie
Rating: 3.268292682926829 (82 reviews)
ISBN: 9788375340259

Audrey Niffenegger

When Elspeth Noblin dies, she leaves everything to the 20-year-old American twin daughters of her own long-estranged twin, Edie. Valentina and Julia, as enmeshed as Elspeth and Edie once were, move into Elspeth's London flat and through a series of developing relationships a crisis develops that could pull the twins apart.

Lustrzane odbicie

From the author of the #1 bestselling The Time Traveler's Wife, a spectacularly compelling novel—set in and near Highgate Cemetery in London, about the love between twins, men and women, ghosts and the living. Julia and Valentina Poole are twenty-year-old sisters with an intense attachment to each other. One morning the mailman delivers a thick envelope to their house in the suburbs of Chicago. Their English aunt Elspeth Noblin has died of cancer and left them her London apartment. There are two conditions for this inheritance: that they live in the flat for a year before they sell it and that their parents not enter it. Julia and Valentina are twins. So were the girls’ aunt Elspeth and their mother, Edie. The girls move to Elspeth’s flat, which borders the vast Highgate Cemetery, where Christina Rossetti, George Eliot, Stella Gibbons, and other luminaries are buried. Julia and Valentina become involved with their living neighbors: Martin, a composer of crossword puzzles who suffers from crippling OCD, and Robert, Elspeth’s elusive lover, a scholar of the cemetery. They also discover that much is still alive in Highgate, including—perhaps—their aunt.

A Novel

Her Fearful Symmetry

Janna Romano

Although I was glad that Doctor Who was mentioned, even how brief it was, I can't really say I have enjoyed this as much as I have enjoyed Time Traveler's Wife. You know, it felt as though it wasn't Niffenegger that I was reading--this book doesn't sound much her at all.

Another brilliant, original and moving novel from the author of The Time Traveler’s Wife. 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 amazing flat in a building by Highgate Cemetery in London. They feel that at last their own lives can begin … but they have no idea that they’ve been summoned into a tangle of fraying lives, from the OCD-suffering 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 mother of the girls — her own twin — and who can’t even seem to quite leave her flat….

Kinda freaky, but an absolutely lovely read!

Jennifer Dieter

Time Traveler's Wife is one of my favorite books. Niffenegger takes you into the implausible and allows you to forget that it's an alternate reality. She does the same in this book, and I was digging it until the last bit of the book. She crosses into the absurd and lost me. Worth a read, because as always, she sets up a beautiful story. It just doesn't finish as beautifully as it started.

At last ---another brilliant, original and moving novel from the author of THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE. 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.

Pia Sophia

** spoiler alert **
           This is a ghost story. I liked that. It's dark and a little sad. I liked that as well. It's full of secrets and intrigue and embarassing family history. Loved that. 

What I didn't like were the Dutch passages and words in between, they felt unnatural (and as a Dutch speaking person, the sentences felt a little too cheesy and stiff to be used in real life anyway). I also disliked the fact that almost everyone got a happy ending just like that--that doesn't really feel like the way the world truly works, I'd say (Jack forgiving 'Edie' and not saying a word about all the decades she's lied to him? Marijke welcoming Martin as if he's cured and nothing in the world bothering him anymore? Valentina drifting off on a crow's back enjoying the freedom she's always longed for? All just like that?!).
 
I am a little ambiguous about the way Niffenegger explains the Big Family Secret. In a letter? It feels... too easy and a little lazy even, maybe. On the other hand, doing it a different way might have dreaded the story and make the overall picture less powerful. Not sure how I feel about it. 

But all in all, this was entertaining and I enjoyed the story. 

3.5 stars

When Elspeth Noblin dies, she leaves everything to the 20-year-old American twin daughters of her own long-estranged twin, Edie. Valentina and Julia, as enmeshed as Elspeth and Edie once were, move into Elspeth's London flat and through a series of develo

Lustrzane odbicie

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