Audrey Niffenegger

Her Fearful Symmetry

Ditipriya Acharya

** spoiler alert **
           Why was Valentina’s solution to a bossy twin dying? Why was Edwina’s solution to switch identities with her twin? Why do all the twins in this book make such bad choices? And why are they so many twins to begin with? 

Robert is quite definitely the most boring male lead in any book. Also the entire Julia-Martin-Theo angle is just strange and gives me the creeps. 

This book has a dysfunctional set of characters, ghosts and a cemetery and yet no part of it is thrilling or scary. I was just bored. The only good thing about this is the symmetry-cemetery angle and the author does nothing with it.

Kath

i've inducted this book into my most favorite books of all time primarily because it made me love reading again after years of a slump. i have yet to read the time traveler's wife which makes this my maiden niffenegger novel & it didn't disappoint. every now & then i find myself hugging the book and just revisiting my favorite scenes and lines 🍒 audrey's writing is spectacular - the way she closed *some* of the characters' stories was so satisfying. this is definitely one of the books that i'd be willing to sell my soul to read again for the first time

Peggy Walker

When I saw this come up in an email from my e-bookstore, I downloaded it immediately. I didn't read anything about it; hadn't heard anything about it; had no expectations whatsoever. Well, that's not true....since it was by the author of The Time Traveler's Wife, I just knew it would be imaginative, complex and fascinating. Right? Well....not so much.

The author is an elegant writer, and she does characterization very well. I had vivid images of all the main characters. I could also "see" the flats, the cemetery and the Postman's park from her descriptions.

It has suddenly come to me is that part of my problem with the book was that it didn't seem to have a clear center. Certainly a great story could have centered on Martin, the neighbor with OCD. I found the stories about Highgate cemetery to be fascinating and would have enjoyed a story surrounding the historian Robert and perhaps bringing in more tales of the people buried there. 

We really only began to know Elspeth once she had died, and readers weren't really encouraged to warm to her. The twins were sort of unformed. There could have been much more made from the "mirror" twins theme that was completely ignored. Why even bring it up? Julia was supposed to be the more decisive and forceful of the 2 but was completely dependent and paralyzed by inertia. Valentina was supposed to be the more fearful and retiring and yet she had a concrete plan for her own adult life and independence. Her "solution" to help break free made no sense at all in any way shape or form and the book pretty much derailed for me at that point. The ending was abrupt and non-sensical and made me want to throw my eReader across the room....except that might break it and there are other, hopefully better, books still on it for me to read.

While I recommend The Time Traveler's Wife to every avid reader I know, I really would not recommend this book to anyone. Pity.

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

A Novel

When I saw this come up in an email from my e-bookstore, I downloaded it immediately. I didn't read anything about it; hadn't heard anything about it; had no expectations whatsoever. Well, that's not true....since it was by the author of The Time Traveler's Wife, I just knew it would be imaginative, complex and fascinating. Right? Well....not so much.[return][return]The author is an elegant writer, and she does characterization very well. I had vivid images of all the main characters. I could also "see" the flats, the cemetery and the Postman's park from her descriptions.[return][return]It has suddenly come to me is that part of my problem with the book was that it didn't seem to have a clear center. Certainly a great story could have centered on Martin, the neighbor with OCD. I found the stories about Highgate cemetery to be fascinating and would have enjoyed a story surrounding the historian Robert and perhaps bringing in more tales of the people buried there. [return][return]We really only began to know Elspeth once she had died, and readers weren't really encouraged to warm to her. The twins were sort of unformed. There could have been much more made from the "mirror" twins theme that was completely ignored. Why even bring it up? Julia was supposed to be the more decisive and forceful of the 2 but was completely dependent and paralyzed by inertia. Valentina was supposed to be the more fearful and retiring and yet she had a concrete plan for her own adult life and independence. Her "solution" to help break free made no sense at all in any way shape or form and the book pretty much derailed for me at that point. The ending was abrupt and non-sensical and made me want to throw my eReader across the room....except that might break it and there are other, hopefully better, books still on it for me to read.[return][return]While I recommend The Time Traveler's Wife to every avid reader I know, I really would not recommend this book to anyone. Pity.

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.

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.

Lacy W

This is probably more of a 3.5.

Wow. I don't even know where to begin when starting with this book. I really have no idea so I apologize if this review is completely out of sorts from my normal reviews that you have all come to know and love. 

When I started this book, I didn't know what to expect. I had read  The Time Traveller's Wife by the same author and I really enjoyed that. So I thought why not try another book by her and see where that leads me. Who knows, I might even become a fan and want to read more of her work. 

I'm on the fence. This book started out really slow. We meet Robert, Martin, Julia, Valentina, Elspeth, and Marijke in a span of a few pages. Everybody ends up connecting in some way or another. I will admit that I did like that aspect. It would have been really annoying otherwise. 

At first, I thought this was just a story about dealing with grief and the twins learning to be their own person. The twins, Julia and Valentina, were very odd. They are mirror image twins. Which means that one twin, Julia, has all her organs in the proper location while the other, Valentina, are mirror opposite. Valentina has health issues because of this and has been taken care of her whole life but now she is starting to resent that. She wants to be her own person but can't because Julia will not let her. 

My review is legit not making any sense at all. It's hard to describe this book properly because it's so out there. I really close to not finishing this book simply because I was bored to tears. I had no idea what anything really had to do with anything. It wasn't until the last 30% of this book, where things got interesting. The ending is the reason why I read this book 3 stars instead of 2. 

I'm going to wrap this up because I'm literally making no sense right now.  Would I recommend this book? you ask. I do not know. Honestly, I don't know. I guess if you are into twins and the paranormal, then by all means check it out. The ending is probably worth the the first 70% of the book being dull as paint.

Lynette Pedersen

I forced myself to finish this book. I'm not really sure why...probably for the sake of this year's reading challenge. I read Bizarre Romance, a hybrid short story collection/graphic novel that Niffenegger did with her husband, and I really loved how, well, bizarre some of the stories were. I thought maybe that level of tongue-in-cheek surrealism would also be found in the novel. I was wrong. Tragically wrong, really. The whole book rests on some pretty flimsy characters making some really bad decisions. Maybe instead of using a phrase from one from one of the most celebrated poems (ironically written NOT a Victorian poet, yet the book is heavy with Victorian references) it should have just been titled Throwing the Baby Out With the Bath Water. 

The premise isn't bad, but the story didn't really back up the description on the jacket. For example, there's something in the description about there is "much still alive" in Highgate Cemetery, but the cemetery is of zero importance to the story, and there is nothing at all going on there until the very, very end when suddenly there are a bazillion ghosts hanging out waiting to fly around on some crows. The scene itself makes little sense, and prompts a whole lot more questions about the rest of the story--how did all the ghosts even get there if ghosts are usually stuck in their houses? Why is Elspeth stuck in the flat to start with? Why does Valentina have to hitch a ride in her sister's mouth (of all places) to get out? Why go to the cemetery at all once she escaped the house? Why do beings who can already fly need or even want to zip around on a crow? (sure, Valentina herself asks this last question, but the only answer another ghost gives her is "It's different." Great, thanks.) And those are just the questions about that particular part of the story. Ultimately, the vast majority of the conflicts could have been resolved if the characters were simply decent people who were honest with the people they loved and maybe, I dunno, had some spines. The most interesting characters were a side story that appear to simply have been inserted into the story for a single pivotal moment to make sure Julia was out of the flat just long enough for Valentina to let Elspeth murder her.  

Really, I could go on and on about the flawed story here, but several other reviewers have done a good job of that already. I will say, however, that I really do think that Niffenegger is fully capable of doing a better job with this story. I watched the two little videos that show up on the Goodreads page for this book, and she seems to have had very good and interesting intentions with this book. Perhaps it was just the pressure of the massive post-blockbuster money and publicity that gave us this half-baked book. Having not read The Time Traveler's Wife, I couldn't say for sure. Whatever the case, I wouldn't write Niffenegger off completely. I just think she missed the target with this one.

Aunt Elspeth has willed her London apartment, which borders Highgate Cemetery, to her twin neices on the conditions that they live in the apartment for a year before they can sell it and their parents cannot enter it. The girls move in and become involved with the neighbours, Valentina, one of the neices, discovers that Elspeth's ghost is haunting the apartment. While the neighbours finds out a secret from Elspeth's past, Valentina and her sister devise a plan to free Valentina from her role as the quiet twin, but all does not go to plan.

Izza

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!

Natasha Musa

200 pages in and I'm hoping that the book would end already, so I gave up the book halfway. The main characters in the book, the twins- Valentina and Julia just didn't appeal to me. The fact that they are glued together and can't do anything without the other is just bleargh... anyway, the storyline and the plot itself was just too slow... Sorry but this book is just not for me.

Jenni Pertuset

This is why I don't read fiction much any more. It's just too damn engaging. I read this in one day -- can I just tell you how little attention Meg got that day? The storytelling is compelling, though the writing isn't as clean as I would like (too many very's and -ish's), the author doesn't do subtlety when it comes to symbols and subtext, and I saw the "twist" coming a mile away. But those are small complaints about a book I quite enjoyed.

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.

Emily Perkovich

I thought I was going to hate this because of the spotty reviews. I’m guessing at this point that those are because The Time Traveler’s Wife has an almost cult classic type of love around it because of the movie, and this was more ghost story than love story. I am pretty biased towards well-written twin stories being as I have a set of twin brothers and a set of twin sisters, so I especially appreciated this part of the story line. Otherwise this was very similar to other British ghost stories, slow-moving, detailed, and full of half-mental people.

Pam Sartain

This was a beautifully written ghost story, that could easily have been a bit unnerving, but managed to be comforting and loving, for the most part!

I don't want to spoil the book, so will say that if you like 'The Time Traveller's Wife', then you'll probably like this book as well!

Amber Laha

I did a review on youtube, if you'd like to check it out. :)http://youtu.be/GqSEklO8J90What I liked:
1. The writing style. It was hauntingly beautiful and I loved the descriptiveness. Her writing drew me into this book that much more, as I was expecting it to.
2. The story. It was so fascinating and I found it so creepy and strange and I liked that because it was different than anything I have read before. It was also was well-developed and I loved how she gave you little hints and clues of what was to happen.
3.The shocking reveal and the unexpected turns. It kept me on my toes.
4. Valentina. She was the only character that I truly liked, other than Martin. Although I didn't agree with her decision I understood and liked here a whole lot. 

Disliked:
1. Julia. She was annoying as all hell for the first half of the book. I did get to the point where I actually liked her and understood her, but that was a long bit. I did understand what Niffenegger was doing though.
2. I had a heart time discerning how old Robert was and I didn't really like how he changed and I didn't understand his decisions at all, especially since he didn't want to do it in the first place. Also: weird foot fetish moment in this book.
3. Although the story was well-developed, I felt that Niffenegger rushed the ending and I was disappointed because things just appeared and I was like, "Where did that come from" 
4. The ending. Although I understood it, it felt abrupt and unexplained. I just can't figure out why he chose this at that moment. Was he just waiting to finish his book or...

So overall I really did enjoy this book immensely, but there were issues that I found so I give it a recommend! :)

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

Her Fearful Symmetry

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