ghostly book review

Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger


This novel is by the same author who wrote The Time Traveler's Wife (the book is SO much better than the film!). I had high hopes.


The story is about two sets of twins - Edie and Elspeth, and Julia and Valentina. The latter set are Edie's daughters. Now didn't I read somewhere that twins skip generations in families? Or am I making that up?


Anyway. Edie and Elspeth haven't spoken for many years. Edie lives in the US with her husband and daughters, and Elspeth lives in London, next to Highgate Cemetery. Her companion, Robert, lives downstairs. He is a volunteer tour guide at the cemetery, and he's writing his thesis about its history and inhabitants. Elspeth's neighbor, Martin, lives upstairs. He has OCD. He washes things, counts, enters rooms a certain way, and hasn't left his flat for months. His wife leaves him and returns to Amsterdam at the beginning of the story. She can't take living with him and his illness anymore, especially since he doesn't seem to want to get help for it.


A great deal of the story is taken up with Martin dealing with his OCD and his wife walking out on him. His storyline is the most solidly resolved of all of them in the novel. He is also the most believeable character of them all. It's obvious Niffenegger did a great deal of research to convey the OCD in a way that wasn't creepy or mocking in any way. You understand why he has his odd rituals. You sympathize with him. However, his storyline feels distractingly inserted into the main plotline, and I'm not sure how it's supposed to support the main story. Especially when his son makes a swift appearance at the end of the story and is suddenly a new focus for Julia. That came across as thrown in at the last minute.


Robert, in turn, is also dealing with his grief over losing Elspeth and getting to know her nieces. He eventually finds out what drove Edie and Elspeth apart, and it was something I'd anticipated toward the beginning when it was clear something had happened years ago between them. He goes along with things too easily. He's pining. It gets annoying after awhile. It's also not clear where he gets his income.


Elspeth dies of cancer, and leaves her flat and most of its contents to her nieces, with the stipulation that they live in the flat for a year and that their parents never set foot in it. After the year is up, they can do as they please - sell the flat and its contents and use the money for whatever they want. She also asks Robert to remove some papers from her flat before the nieces arrive. (This is how he finds out her Big Secret.)


Julia and Valentina are just out of their teens. They are extraordinarily close. They do everything together. They even dress the same despite how silly it looks given their age. Julia is the stronger and more outgoing of the two. She is Valentina's protector and sometimes caregiver. Valentina has a weak heart and also has asthma. They are mirror twins, so Valentina's organs are not where they normally would be. Instead, they are are opposite to Julia's.


Valentina isn't too keen on going to London, let alone living there for a year, but Julia wants to go, and they do everything together...


I liked Valentina's character better than Julia's. Valentina's nickname is "Mouse." At the beginning of the story, she is timid and weak. A kitten comes into her life (go figure). She changes and starts to gain some independence. You want to cheer her on. Julia is bossy and can't see beyond her and Valentina spending the rest of their lives together. Any other possibility doesn't occur to her. Even at the end, she is left stunned and disbelieving that things did not work out according to her plan. But then, she never really had a plan, other than maybe getting a dog.


You don't get to know Elspeth well, besides the inventory of what is in her flat and what others say about her. In a way, this makes sense. She's dead. But everyone has a point of view in this novel. To keep her in the story, she finds herself back in her flat after she dies. In fact, she can't leave it. There is very little she can do, other than snooze in a desk drawer. She is glad to see the twins when they finally arrive. She tries to make herself known to them. It takes awhile, but she finally gets through. Valentina can sense her, and even see her after awhile, but Julia cannot.


Valentina becomes friendly with Robert, and Julia does the same with Martin. After hanging around the flat and exploring London, Valentina is the first to get bored. She wants to do other things. Things that don't necessarily involve Julia. A rift starts to form between them, and Valentina becomes obsessed with getting away from Julia and gaining some independence.


Elspeth hovers nearby watching the proceedings. Eventually, the twins are able to communicate with Elspeth via ouija board and automatic writing, although this happened too quickly and conveniently for my taste.


This is also the point where the story started getting weird, and where I stopped liking it.


Now, if Valentina had simply taken her share of the inheritance money and gone elsewhere to start her own life, that would have made more sense in the plot. However, it wouldn't have been much of a story at that point, so I can see why Niffenegger went in a different direction to keep the story going.


No one seems to be disturbed by the ghost thing for long. And lots of people find out about it. That aspect didn't sit right. Neither did everyone only showing the barest amount of reluctance to go along with the absurd plan that develops at the end of the novel. Not enough shock. Not enough "Are you crazy?" and trying to stop it. Again, if there had been, the story would have stopped, and the author was determined to get to the end and wrap things up.


Oh, and about the ending. Abrupt and unsatisfying. Leaves you with a feeling of most of the characters' efforts not being worth it after all. In a way, the ending felt like a set-up for another book, but I doubt that's the case.


The descriptions of Highgate Cemetery reminded me of Pere Lachaise, and I think Robert's thesis might have been an interesting read. In fact, next time I'm in London, I will try to go to Highgate and pay my respects to Douglas Adams, George Eliot, and Christina Rossetti.


I was really looking forward to this book, especially after reading The Time Traveler's Wife. As I said above, I liked it up to a point. But when it started getting strange and absurd, it was too much of a jolt from the flow of the story that had been established and just didn't fit. I don't know if that was sloppy editing or what. I wanted to like this book, but I can't quite bring myself to do it.