Review
`...(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
Book Description
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.
From the Inside Flap
dearest e,
I told you I would let you know-so here it is-goodbye.
I try to imagine what it would feel like if it was you-but it's impossible to conjure the world without you, even though we've been apart so long.
I didn't leave you anything. You got to live my life. That's enough. Instead I'm experimenting-I've left the whole lot to the twins. I hope they'll enjoy it.
Don't worry, it will be okay.
Say goodbye to Jack for me.
Love, despite everything,
e
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.
About the Author
Audrey Niffenegger is an exceptionally creative writer and visual artist who has achieved enormous success in both worlds. Her debut novel, The Time Traveler's Wife, has sold nearly five million copies worldwide and has been translated into thirty-three languages to date. A Richard & Judy book club choice in the UK, it has been a huge bestseller all round the world. In the Daily Telegraph's readers' poll of the 'Top 50 Books of All Time' it appeared at no. 11. Niffenegger is also the author of two 'novels-in-pictures', The Three Incestuous Sisters(2005) and The Adventuress (2006), both published by Cape. Her graphic novel The Night Bookmobile was recently serialized in the Guardian and will be published soon on the Cape Graphic list.
A Chicago native, Niffenegger received her MFA in Printmaking and Drawing from Northwestern University. Her art has been widely exhibited in the United States and is in the permanent collections of the Library of Congress and Harvard University's Houghton Library.
