Her Fearful Symmetry

A Novel

By: Audrey Niffenegger

Narrated by: Bianca Amato

Length: 13 hrs and 45 mins

Publisher's summary

When Elspeth Noblin dies of cancer, she leaves her London apartment to her twin nieces, Julia and Valentina. These two American girls never met their English aunt; they only knew that their mother, too, was a twin, and Elspeth her sister. Julia and Valentina are semi-normal American teenagers - with seemingly little interest in college, finding jobs, or anything outside their cozy home in the suburbs of Chicago, and with an abnormally intense attachment to one another.

The girls move to Elspeth's flat, which borders Highgate Cemetery in London. They come to know the building's other residents, including Martin, a brilliant and charming crossword-puzzle setter suffering from crippling Obsessive Compulsive Disorder; Marjike, Martin's devoted but trapped wife; and Robert, Elspeth's elusive lover, a scholar of the cemetery.

As the girls become embroiled in the fraying lives of their aunt's neighbors, they also discover that much is still alive in Highgate, including - perhaps - their aunt, who can't seem to leave her old apartment and life behind.

Niffenegger weaves a captivating story in Her Fearful Symmetry about love and identity, about secrets and sisterhood, and about the tenacity of life - even after death.

©2009 Audrey Niffenegger (P)2009 Simon & Schuster

Critic reviews

"[S]he has a knack for taking the romantic into the realm of creepiness, and she constructs a taut mystery around the secrets to be found in Elspeth's diaries and the lengths to which she will go to reunite with her younger lover. It's no small achievement that the revelations are both organic and completely unexpected." ( The New Yorker)

Bizarre

The narrator was wonderful, but the story was weird and hard to believe. There were holes and things that didn't make sense. The ending was unsatisfactory as well. There were exciting parts, but it was a bit cheesy.

Dragged and dragged!

After almost 3 hours of this book, I quit. I don't care for the characters or the plot. I have a 3 hour car trip tomorrow and decided I just couldn't do it w/ this book.

Very Disappointing

I had such high hopes for this book after The Time Traveler's Wife. What a disappointment!! The entire book was, well, icky. At times I found it difficult to follow and at others I found it difficult to continue listening. It was just not a good read.

Absolutely Awful!

I really thought this was going to be a promising book. The first half of the story sucks you in really well and give you hope that it is going to be a great book. But then things just start going wrong.

For me, sometimes a book doesn't end the way I want it to, but I still like it because it is real or reasonable. This book ends badly and I hated it because of its absurdity. It is completely and utterly ABSURD!

The characters are all hard to like and sometimes that happens and I put up with it because I can at least identify or like someone. In this book, the characters are all soulless morons. They make completely ridiculous decisions that are selfish, arrogant and self-pitying all at the same time. Perhaps if this was more of a fantasy, science fiction novel where the characters were not human, you might understand the actions of the characters.

Don't waste your time on this book! The second half of the story is so amazingly disappointing, you will end it feeling mad that you read this review and still listened to the book.

The audio of this book was really well done and the only reason I gave it two stars rather than one. The narrator was great.

Artful meandering

Audrey Neiffengger is a skilled writer. Unfortunately for this book, she forgot to develop the plot. The book meanders through the characters lives and this is where she spends her efforts. The author forgot about the story. It has about as much substance as the ghosts she writes about. Again, meandering is the essence of this book. It passes time, but leaves the listener-reader nowhere at the end.

Reluctantly Dislike

I have mixed feelings about this book: The writing is good enough and the story is engaging, but there came a point -- perhaps 2/3 of the way through -- where the story became too disturbing for me and I had to stop listening to it. Significantly, this is the first time that has ever happened to me: Sometimes a story becomes upsetting and I need to read the synopsis on Wikipedia to find out what's going to happen before I can proceed (e.g., A Fine Balance), but this is the first time that I read the synopsis and still decided to quit, despite thinking it was a perfectly well-written book. I just found some of the plot points -- and one of the characters -- too unpleasant. I loved The Time Traveler's Wife, however, and will continue to follow Niffenegger's writing for the time being.

Wish I didn't buy this book

This was a painful and boring book to listen to. I actually deleted the book about 3/4 of the way through it, I simply could not take another minute of the endless stupid comments by the characters. The girls are 21 but were written more like 10 year olds. The story line has little to do with the aunt as a ghost. There was no character development or plot that held your attention. A true waste of time and money.

Too strange

This story started out well and I was looking forward to the twins learning and developing as they had their experiences in London and with the other characters. Instead, the story took a strange and disturbing turn which was, to quote another reviewer, "icky". I listened to the end of the story, but there was never any real redemption after the story took the strange turn. I would not recommend this book. A better choice and book I really enjoyed was The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton.

Not my cup of tea

I really loved the Time Traveler's wife, but I didn't like this book by Audrey Niffenegger. I didn't make sense to me and it was kind of depressing. Not worth a credit.

Not a patch on The Time Traveller's Wife

I was perfectly prepared to suspend disbelief for the Time Traveller, and I loved it, but the characters in this novel are just badly drawn, unsympathetic, unconvincing. The best thing about the novel is its great title. The idea of setting it in Hyde Park Cemetery is brilliant...everything else is ghastly. A boring, sordid little tale.