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Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

I can only imagine the pressure Audrey Niffenegger was under to reproduce the success of her debut. Quite sensibly she has not tried to reproduce it at all and Her Fearful Symmetry is a completely different kettle of fish.

Audrey Niffenegger’s first novel, The Time Traveler’s Wife, sold five million copies around the world and is now a Hollywood film starring Rachel ocAdams and Eric Bana. The ultimate romance, it traced the lengths to which a woman in love will go when her husband keeps disappearing into the future or the past and then showing back up again unannounced and often buck naked.

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Readers who could deal with the jumps in time wept buckets and loved The Time Traveler’s Wife to pieces. I was one of them. I can only imagine the pressure Audrey Niffenegger was under to reproduce the success of her debut. Quite sensibly she has not tried to reproduce it at all and Her Fearful Symmetry is a completely different kettle of fish.

Set in London, in and around the historic Highgate Cemetery, it’s the story of American twins Valentina and Julia who inherit the flat belonging to their mother’s estranged sister (also a twin) upon her death. Personally I found the twins at times in need of a good slapping, but I think you are supposed to feel that way about lazy 20-year-olds, aren’t you?

To begin with they sort of waft around looking blonde and thin and beautiful but not wanting to do much with their lives. Then they move to London to live in their dead aunt’s flat and their worlds are thoroughly shaken up. For a start, their aunt isn’t as dead as she perhaps might be. Also, her boyfriend who lives in the same building has stopped grieving long enough to notice that Valentina might be making him feel a teeny bit better.

Part ghost story, part coming-of-age tale, part ode to a Cemetery, this book may lack the handkerchief-soaking romance of its predecessor but my  advice is to forget about The Time Traveler’s Wife and read Her Fearful Symmetry for what it is – a haunting story about letting go (or not letting go) by a very clever novelist.**

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