Her Fearful Symmetry

A Novel

By: Audrey Niffenegger

Narrated by: Bianca Amato

From the author of the #1 bestselling The Time Traveler's Wife, a spectacularly compelling novel—set in and near Highgate Cemetery in London, about the love between twins, men and women, ghosts and the living.

Julia and Valentina Poole are twenty-year-old sisters with an intense attachment to each other. One morning the mailman delivers a thick envelope to their house in the suburbs of Chicago. Their English aunt Elspeth Noblin has died of cancer and left them her London apartment. There are two conditions for this inheritance: that they live in the flat for a year before they sell it and that their parents not enter it. Julia and Valentina are twins. So were the girls’ aunt Elspeth and their mother, Edie.

The girls move to Elspeth’s flat, which borders the vast Highgate Cemetery, where Christina Rossetti, George Eliot, Stella Gibbons, and other luminaries are buried. Julia and Valentina become involved with their living neighbors: Martin, a composer of crossword puzzles who suffers from crippling OCD, and Robert, Elspeth’s elusive lover, a scholar of the cemetery. They also discover that much is still alive in Highgate, including—perhaps—their aunt.©2009 Audrey Niffenegger; (P)2009 Simon & Schuster

Loved it!! Hope there's a sequel!

The story was very imaginative and the characters rich and interesting. The performance was outstanding. I truly hope that there is a sequel or better yet, a series of books like this from this wonderful author. Everything I have read of hers I have been quite impressed with, but this was definitely a favorite! I hated when it ended!

A well-narrated and at times facinating tale

Identical and inseparable college-aged twins inherit a London flat from their recently deceased, estranged aunt (their mother's identical twin). The twins move to London and are drawn into the life of the aunt's odd but endearing community of friends. The tale grows increasingly bizarre. I found the story slow, sepia-toned, and thought-provoking. The excellent narrator brings a diverse mix of characters to life and manages to hold the loosely braided plot together.

Enjoyable story, good narrator

I found that like most good ghost stories, it was also a love story. The characters were well-defined and it was by turns, funny, sad and touching. I really enjoyed the narration of this book and will look for others books narrated by Bianca Amato now.

Great Story But Blah Ending

I, too, bought this audiobook because I loved The Time Traveler's Wife by the same author. The story and characters were interesting and I enjoyed the story until the ending. To me it was a disappointment and didn't live up to the climax the story "seemed" to be heading in. I agree with the reviewer that said the narrator was odd and difficult to connect with.

imaginative

I don't know, this book had some interesting characters, interesting parts but overall it just didn't grab me that much.