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124 of 135 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful Writing, Interesting Story with Odd Twists, September 7, 2009
After The Time Traveler's Wife (TTTW), this book has been much anticipated by so many, including myself.
That puts a lot of pressure on the author as well as the reader. I had to begin the book with an open mind to read it as a stand alone and not a 'follow-up' to The Times Traveler's Wife.
The story begins with the untimely death of Elspeth who leaves behind her lover, Robert. Robert has an apartment (flat) in the same building as Elspeth and is devastated by her death. Elspeth leaves her London flat to her nieces (twins living in the United States) under the condition that their mother (Elspeth's twin, Edie) never steps foot in the flat. This begs the question of what could have happened between the two sisters (Elspeth and Edie) to cause such tension and need for control. The 20 year-old twins, full of quirky thoughts and behaviors, move to London and Robert, intrigued and haunted by their resemblance to Elspeth, stalks them for awhile before eventually meeting up with them during a tour he was giving at Highgate Cemetery. The story really develops with the reemergence of Elspeth as a broody ghost, destined to stay in her flat watching over and desperately trying to communicate with her nieces as they begin their new lives in London.
As I began this book, I was immediately caught up in Ms. Niffenegger's wonderful ability to create characters that become amazingly real right from the start. She has an uncanny way of creating relationships built on such a deep love that we yearn to be involved with those in our own lives with the same depth of feeling.
The story begins beautifully (and sad), the concept is wonderful and the characters are richly developed. Ms. Niffenegger tells the story in a unique way and leaves mysteries and unanswered questions for readers to want to continue.
The writing is excellent, there are a variety of characters to love or at least be intrigued with. The scenery is well developed and the inclusion of Highgate Cemetery (and much of its history) makes for a fascinating setting. I think it is because most of the story is set in London that Ms. Niffenegger has chosen to use British spelling throughout the book. It is not a distraction though. As someone whose family is from England, there were many references to places, stores, and food items, that were familiar to me but may not be to others. I don't think these references will confuse the reader but for me, it was like going home for awhile.
One of the characters, Martin, has severe OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) and won't even leave his flat. Ms. Niffenegger must have done a lot of research to create this character so realistically. She does a great job developing a believable (albeit extreme) relationship between the twins - both sets - who are the main characters.
As with TTTW, there were moments that I felt uneasy, events that were a little out line with the flow of the story and the personality of the characters. There were things that happened that I just couldn't see going that way (or maybe didn't want to go in that direction). Unfortunately, these events, conversations, or actions, occasionally got in the way of the story. I'm sure Ms. Niffenegger understands her characters better than I do but when they are developed so richly, we feel we know them.
The story is very creative and unique but takes some turns in the second half that detract from the beauty of the storytelling. It was worth finishing but left me a little unsettled.
Overall, Ms. Niffenegger is a wonderful and original storyteller. She has a great ability to build characters in depth and create relationships deep with emotion. She has researched all aspects of her story well. This book is worth reading, but before reading, set aside any great hope of surpassing TTTW.
As an added note, if I think of books I would give a 4 star rating, this is probably a better book but in comparison to her first novel, it is not a 5 star book. It puts the reviewer in a difficult position - to rate compared to other books, or expectations... If I could, I would give it 4½ stars.
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125 of 139 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Sophomoric, August 28, 2009
It's a bad sign, indeed, when a familiar and particularly damning bit of British slang pops into my head as I am reading a novel--the unfortunate word is "twee." The word can be merely descriptive (too cute, kitschy) or it can be part of a judgment. In this case, it is both.
Fans of The Time Traveler's Wife will be eager to read Audrey Niffenegger's second novel and nothing I write should discourage them from that. There are undeniable pleasures in Her Fearful Symmetry--there is a strong sense of local color, and that locality is a particularly appealing part of London. There are several eccentric characters who are at least fun to get to know--at first. And for anyone who really likes ghost stories, there is a ghost story, even including whole sections located in the mind of the main ghost, so we are seeing the world with a ghost's eye view during several important parts of the narrative.
Ms. Niffenegger is also skillful at shifting points of view and perspective, building a degree of suspense as she does so. But she builds that very slowly, indeed. I enjoy the kind of "classic" narrative that builds slowly, gradually dealing out the details of the characters' lives and revealing by steps the important information that advances the plot. But there can be too much of that, and I have to say that well over half of this novel passes slowly by before much of the potential suspense and interest begins to take hold; in the final quarter of the novel, the potential intensity of the story grabs the reader who has been extremely patient until that point.
The main characters of Her Fearful Symmetry are two sets of twins, mother/aunt and the daughters/nieces of the mother twin. At the beginning of the novel, one of the elder twins dies, leaving her estate to the younger twins, who are required to move from Chicago to London to live in the flat which is part of the substantial bequest. That sets in motion the ghost story. The younger twins are reminiscent of the "innocent abroad" American women so prominent in the fiction of Henry James or, more recently, Diane Johnson. Both James and Johnson, however, develop those characters in the context of richly portrayed and complex social contexts; in this case, the isolation of the twins is a necessary part of the ghost story, so there is very little social context to enliven the narrative. The other major characters are two men, both very eccentric in a variety of ways, one of whom lives in the flat above the twins, the other, who was the dead older twin's lover when she died, lives in the flat below.
Much of the opening half of the novel portrays characters not meeting each other, not communicating with each other (though italic sentences frequently let the reader in on what they are thinking), and not doing much of anything except more or less spying on each other. All this is tied to the strong theme of the novel, the difficulty of "knowing" another person, and that is tied, of course, to the even more powerful and challenging theme, the difficulty of knowing oneself. The latter is particularly problematic, we are let to understand, for identical twins who grow up together, frequently mistaken for each other and hardly knowing how to separate themselves from each other. This does go on and on, and the novel seems to be suggesting to us that it is really very important for such division and assertion of individual identity to take place--or dreadful things may happen.
The "twee" quality comes from some of the cutesy observations and behavior both of the younger twins and of the ghost. (Along with the echoes of James and Wharton and Johnson, as well as other twin stories, I could not help but remember Dorothy Baker's much more powerful novel about twins, Cassandra at the Wedding.) There is a potentially interesting effort to make colors--of clothing, of furniture, of faces and bodies--carry some symbolic weight; the potential divisions between both sets of twins are materialized in their very different senses of style in clothing and decoration, but this finally adds little to the narrative, feeling sometimes laid on.
Unlike The Time Traveler's Wife, which had the constant enlivening energy of its tricky premise as a time-travel story, this novel feels loaded down by its immature and eccentric characters, who are finally not interesting enough in themselves to keep the reader engaged until the real ghost story, with its horrific twists, kicks in. Even in that section of the novel, there is entirely too much moping about among the characters; the one redemptive development and a related possibility are at least appealing, but feel disconnected from the main line of the novel.
Though this is not Niffenegger's second book, it is her second--sophomore--novel. Unfortunately, it suffers from sophomoritis. Fans will enjoy it. Others might want to wait fo the author's next novel.
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30 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Great Ensemble Ghost Story, September 7, 2009
Audrey Niffengger's second novel "Her Fearful Symmetry" focuses on the Noblin family and it's two sets of twins--a mother and aunt to two teenage sisters--and the terrible secret that ties them all together. When the two teenagers are left an apartment in London by an aunt they've never met, the girls believe the apartment is their chance to escape their mundane life in the suburbs of Chicago. But soon after moving to London, the girls realize there is something not right with their apartment. With the help of their reclusive neighbors, the girls discover the building's secret and ultimately must make decisions about their own lives based on what they discover.
I loved this second effort from Niffengger, author of the bestselling "Time Traveler's Wife". The book is genuinely creepy as a ghost story, and Niffengger does a great job of weaving the different elements of the novel together to create a creepiness throughout the narrative. There are enough twists in the plot to keep you guessing, and Niffengger's obvious talent as a novelist is once again on display. Niffengger spends a great deal of time sketching each of her characters for the reader, so this book really has the feel of an ensemble piece rather than a novel with just a few central characters.
Some of the elements that worked so well in "Time Traveler's Wife" are back again, including Niffengger's use of fantastic/scifi elements to add a unique dimension to her work. Niffengger's strong narrative voice is also back, and it does a good job of pulling the reader right into this story.
I think if you enjoyed "Time Traveler's Wife" you will also enjoy this novel. Be warned that it's very different from "Time Traveler" but in a good way--you don't really want to read the same story twice!
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