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Her Fearful Symmetry [Hardcover]

Audrey Niffenegger
3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (335 customer reviews)
RRP: £18.99
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Book Description

1 Oct 2009
A ghost story about the author's familiar themes of love, loss and identity.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Her Fearful Symmetry + The Tiger's Wife
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Product details

  • Hardcover: 400 pages
  • Publisher: Jonathan Cape; First Scribner Hardcover Edition edition (1 Oct 2009)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0224085611
  • ISBN-13: 978-0224085618
  • Product Dimensions: 15.7 x 3.6 x 24 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (335 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 58,894 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

Review

`A hot contender for the book of the year' --Red

`...(Niffenegger) constructs a taut mystery ...It's no small achievement that the revelations are both organic and completely unexpected'
--The New Yorker

"Delicious and deadly" --Yorkshire Evening Post

`a powerful and beautiful exploration of the relationships between the living and dead...Niffenegger's writing has lost none of its emotional power'
--Psychologies

"Chillingly good" --Marie Claire

"There's no mistaking Niffenegger's originality...She's a real rarity: at once a good writer and a genuine obsessive" --Evening Standard

"Stylish, easy to read... with a dark, delicious plot which has several neat twists" --Scotsman

"A multi-layered, absorbingly nuanced love story...Beautifully constructed and unfurling with exquisite tragedy..." --Easy Living

"Delicious prose...She lays out her story in delectable, textual pictures...a powerful, beautifully written ghost story"
--Mslexia

`A ghostly love story and a lovely ghost story.' --Tatler

"This is a rich, involving novel..." -- The Times

"Niffenegger's books are fabulously left field, striking an unlikely balance between romance and fantasy. A brilliantly beautiful book."
-- Glamour magazine

"...Niffenegger rarely reverts to stereotypes when creating her characters...they are always interesting..."
"...an emotional depth rarely found in ghost stories." --Sunday Herald

"Niffenegger's story is written with a lightness of touch and with a great eye for the oddities of human behaviour". --Daily Telegraph

"a nicely atmospheric book".
--Sunday Telegraph

Book Description

The brilliant new novel from the author of the massive international bestseller, The Time Traveler's Wife

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
113 of 121 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing 29 Aug 2010
By Bex
Format:Paperback
I suppose it was always going to be difficult to follow The Time Traveler's Wife. But frankly, even judging this book on its own merits and ignoring Audrey Niffenegger's previous novel this book is strangely lacking.

On the face of it the Her Fearful Symmetry has potential. It's the story of a ghost (Elspeth) haunting her old flat which she's left to her twin nieces (Julia and Valentina), while hiding a deep, dark secret. This sets the scene for what could become a dark, sinsister ghost story, but actually seems to be a weird, convoluted, supernatural soap opera which feels like it's building up to something, never really makes good on that promise and then sort of trails off towards the end, leaving the reader feeling largely indifferent.

There's very little believability in any of the characters. We are told that Elspeth's lover Robert is grief-stricken, but I don't think it actually comes across to the reader that well. In fact on the whole, grief is depicted very weakly throughout the entire novel so that the characters come across as fairly vague, shallow and two-dimensional and impossible to relate to.

Nevertheless, Her Fearful Symmetry starts off with promise. Elspeth dies and becomes a ghost and then the twins move into the haunted flat and set about finding their feet in London in a slightly aimless way. Julia makes friends with the man in the flat upstairs, Martin, who sets crosswords and has OCD. Robert meanwhile spends his days stalking the twins, before finally meeting them and taking a liking to Valentina. It's all a bit odd and truth be told a bit dull and flat, but then they discover Elspeth's haunting the flat and I started to think it might be going somewhere.

And then it just gets silly. Elspeth's deep, dark secret is frankly laughable. Utterly, utterly bizarre, completely unbelievable and also completely unneccessary. It doesn't really have any impact on the story or any of the characters and just doesn't make sense. And as if that wasn't enough Elspeth and Valentina concoct a plan so completely stupid and insane that it beggars belief. I don't want to give too much away so I won't go into the details but suffice to say this plan is complete madness. And then they rope Robert in and even though he realises it's the worst plan ever he somehow feels compelled to go along with it for reasons that are never really explained.

The whole thing seems ill-conceived and the events of the 'plot' often seem to happen randomly. It feels like a collection of interesting ideas that have been crammed into one novel, regardless of whether they actually add anything to the book. There's too much going on and it all seems fairly irrelevant.

On the whole, it's quite a frustrating book to read because somehow you feel it should have been so much better. Not just because of the success of The Time Traveler's Wife but also because there are some ideas here that could have potentially been turned into a decent novel. Instead it feels thrown together and badly thought out. A slapdash effort from an author we know can write better.
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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars If I only I could Time Travel... 19 Aug 2010
By Quicksilver TOP 500 REVIEWER VINE™ VOICE
Format:Paperback
...Then I could go back and visit myself and make sure I don't bother reading 'Her Fearful Symmetry'. 'The Time Traveller's Wife' is one of my all time favourite books, but this novel is as bad as that was good.

Things start well, and I thought I was in for another treat. Reading Niffenegger's prose is effortless. She has a an exquisite way of paring down emotions, without becoming bogged down in flowery language. The main emotions that run through this book are love, grief and the claustrophobia of life.

The novel centres around 'mirror' twins, Valentina and Julia, who are identical but inverted. They inherit a London flat from their Aunt (Elspeth), who is the estranged twin of their mother (Edie). The reasons for this estrangement are 'dark', 'mysterious' and - oh yes - 'wholly predictable'. In the flat below where the twins live, resides Robert, their Aunt's former lover, and a historian with an interest in Highgate Cemetery. The third resident in the block, and by far the most interesting character in the book, is Martin, a reclusive crossword-setter, whose wife has recently left him, unable to cope with his OCD. If the book had been more about these two, I think it may have been a many-splendoured thing.

Most of the book follows the twins as they explore London, free from their parents, and offers an interesting perspective on the life of identical twins. If you have spent your entire life together, how do you gain independence from one another, without shattering a unique relationship? Not being a twin myself, I have no idea who accurate a depiction this is, but I found it thought-provoking and moving. It's a shame the same can't be said for the rest of the book.

It's hard to explain why the book is so bad without giving away important plot points, but it will be no great surprise that somewhere along the line there are some twin-swapping shenanigans, hardly the most innovative of plot devices. (Also, despite her assertions to the contrary, the author kept muddling the names of the twins in question here, making for a very confusing read.) The structure of the novel is all over the place. The time-frame jumps forward abruptly with little or no reason, making the novel feel disjointed. Considering that the 'TTTW' flows so well, despite its wildly altering time-frame, this is inexcusable.

Robert is a terrible character, who has the most unreal friends. Essential to the plot is an act that in normal society would see Robert pilloried by everybody that knew him (and this is before all the ghost stuff), yet nobody says anything about it all. The whole latter half of the book is based on the flakiest of premises. Worse still, Niffenegger forces her characters to fit the novel's events without subtlety. They move towards their various dooms like automatons; there is no sense of character development or any plausible reason why the players act like they do.

Then comes the ghost story, which starts interestingly enough, but eventually descends into implausible farce. In 'TTTW', the concept fitted into our reality with the minimum of artistic licence, but here we are asked to swallow a much bigger pill, and I found it impossible. The novel's twist, I saw coming from a long way off, which probably didn't help, but the whole thing stank of a rejected Stephen King storyline. The only good thing I found in this section, was the novel's conclusion, which I know a lot of people didn't like. I thought the abrupt ending was strong, and in keeping with the self-absorption the characters had displayed during the rest of the novel.

In summary this is a terrible novel, one which should do serious damage to Niffenegger's status as a serious literary novelist. The only thing to come out of this novel with an enhanced reputation is Highgate Cemetery, which is depicted with a great deal of care and attention. It is sounds like a fascinating place, filled with history and stories. This story however, is not worth the cover price.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars Not a patch on Time Traveler's Wife 10 July 2010
By Kate
Format:Paperback
Starts off very promising but then descends into silliness. Very disappointing. Hope her next is better.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting story
An enjoyable read that is well written. The characters are interesting at times and the story can be slightly complex because it involves twins and there's an odd agreement... Read more
Published 2 days ago by martine ukpong
5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful
A great read, enchanting, mysterious, atmospheric and chilling. Just as good as The Time Travellers Wife. A real page turner.
Published 6 days ago by Mrs Figaro
5.0 out of 5 stars Its NOT "TTTW" BUT WHY SHOULD IT BE !
Ok, dispel a myth , you cant judge a book based upon someone else's review - if you liked TTTW ( I had not read it until I read Symmetry ) then you will be waiting in vain for the... Read more
Published 18 days ago by Karry Gardner
5.0 out of 5 stars I loved this book
It takes a lot these days for me to get lost in a book. I'm not the most focused person in the world and whilst reading the first few chapters I usually put the book down... Read more
Published 21 days ago by French Fancy
5.0 out of 5 stars Intriguing
Twins from Chicago inherit their dead aunts London flat, there being a dark secret between their mother and her twin which means they never met her. Read more
Published 27 days ago by JW07
4.0 out of 5 stars Her Fearful Symmetry
Fantastic. It was very difficult to put down! It was even better than Time Travellers Wife! Highly recommended for a good read.
Published 1 month ago by serena kearns
2.0 out of 5 stars In the second half...it all falls apart!
This book has some merits - most of all the sumptuous, atmospheric descriptions of Highgate Cemetary. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Christine Frost
5.0 out of 5 stars NIFFENIGGER AT HER BEST
A good read that runs smoothly from the first page, making you want to keep turning the pages. Much better than, in my opinion, The Time Travellers Wife. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Karmakat
5.0 out of 5 stars A great read
Really enjoyed this book. Nice to read something a little different. It was also nice to read about Highgate cemetery
Published 1 month ago by L. Jackson
5.0 out of 5 stars A ghost story within a modern relationship.
A modern day love affair with a supernatural twist. Characters with flaws and failings, eg OCD Martin, that you can empathise with. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Dingle
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