Her Fearful Symmetry

A Novel

De: Audrey Niffenegger

Narrado por: Bianca Amato

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

Reseñas de la Crítica

"[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)

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.

Lacking....

The story seemed to build slowly to a dramatic point....and then was over. It was as if the whole story was an introduction...then it ended right about where most stories would get going. This might actually be a clever literary device....but it didn't come off that way. Also, there was some foreshadowing....but it was so out of the blue, that it really didn't mean much. That is, when one of the main characters gives a glimpse of the future...you feel like she felt she had to slip that in....but up until that moment, there was really nothing else in the character's early actions to justify their later actions. Just a general disconnect between the character development and the plot development.

Where everything came together nicely in The Time Traveler's Wife, here, it seems much more forced, with characters acting....out of character...to advance the plot.

Hope Ms. Niffenegger returns to form next time.

Could have great....

but it just turned out WEIRD!

really?

After reading the Time Traveler's Wife I should have expected an off beat book. I actually enjoyed the first half. The last half was just so far fetched, I had a hard time caring about the characters.

Disappointing sophomore effort

After reading The Traveler's Wife and loving it, I was looking gorward to Niffinegger's followup and was, sadly, disappointed. Although the characters are reasonably well developed, I found the story itself thin. I hope she can redeem herself with a third book, as I am willing to give her another chance. I loved Bianca Amato's reading style and will look for other audiobooks of hers.

Disappointed

I was enthralled with the first 2/3 of the book, then the storyline just fell apart for me, unlike The Time Traveler's Wife which I re-read after listening to the book because I enjoyed it so much. The last 1/3 of Her Fearful Symmetry just didn't flow at all for me. I felt the author had "run out of steam" in completing a story that was so interesting at the beginning. The most interesting character ended up being Martin who was not one of the main personalities; the description of his OCD was very well portrayed.

This book is why ghosts moan!

The book started out as an interesting study of the relationship of twins. As my wife is a twin, I found many similarities of her life with her sister and the sisters in the book. While the relationship of the twins was spot on, based on my observations, the story line requires the reader to suspend disbelief in regard to ghosts. Everyone loves a ghost story, so not a problem. However, about halfway through the book, the reader is required to suspend disbelief and accept the ridiculous. Soon thereafter, the author spirals out of control into the realm of absurdity and stupidity. In the end, the book finishes similarly to how an elementary school student might finish a paper on the Titanic by saying "and then they all died." It's as if the author realized the minimum page number required by the publisher had been met and wanted to wrap it up in ten lines or less. The book is such a disappointment considering the work the author has demonstrated in the past. If not for the success of The Time Traveler's Wife, I doubt this book would have even been considered for publication. This book is why ghosts moan.

Excellent writer, disappointing story

Ms Niffenegger did a marvelous job in this book creating engaging characters and describing situations. Unfortunately, the story (especially the second half) became silly and ground to an unsatisfying halt. Excellent narrator.