Her Fearful Symmetry [Paperback]

There's always a mixture of anxiety and excitement when reading the new book by an author whose first book you loved so much (in this case, The Time Traveler's Wife). And, although I tried really hard, I couldn't help but compare the two books while reading Her Fearful Symmetry. Let me just come out right now and say: this book is not as good. But does that mean it's bad? Not at all.

Her Fearful Symmetry has an intoxicating idea behind it: the idea of what happens after we die. And this is an idea that has been written about a million times before. What I enjoyed so much about The Time Traveler's Wife was that she took a subject like time travel and gave it a new twist, brought it out in a way that I hadn't seen before. Her Fearful Symmetry doesn't quite accomplish this task. I was still drawn into the world, the characters, the story...but there was something stilted about the whole thing, something a little less magical.

This book has many characters and the third person POV oscillates back and forth between their stories. Niffenegger weaves her theme of obsession well into each story. There is also the theme of (obviously) symmetry and mirror-images, of being attached to someone, whether that attachment is love, family, genetic, or otherwise. A few times she pushes this theme a bit too much, leaving her authorial fingerprints behind a few too many times.

Niffenegger's writing, as in her first book, is simple and effective. She tells a good story and the pacing works well, leaving me reading for hours on end without boredom. The last quarter of the book, however, contains some plot elements (which I can't delve into here for fear of ruining things) that were a bit difficult for me to swallow, believability-wise. I'm not talking supernatural elements, but more choices characters made. Certain things didn't feel true to the character or the story she had been telling so far, as if Niffenegger had an idea about what she wanted to happen and forced her characters into that idea, even though it didn't seem to fit properly. Obviously, everyone will have their own opinions as to whether the decisions in the last quarter of the book work or not. For me, they didn't. But not in such a drastic way as to ruin the book for me.

I was still entranced by the story, enough so that the disappointments I had about the book took a backstage to my actual enjoyment of reading it. I feel as though the pressure of the second novel after the first was such a success has led Niffenegger to perhaps over think and over write this book, and I look forward to her third novel, where I imagine some of this pressure is alleviated.

Elsbeth Noblin has not seen her twin Edie for twenty years. Letters have been exchanged, but without resolution of the family secret which has kept them apart. Elsbeth dies and leaves her London flat and considerable estate to Edie's twin daughters, stipulating that they must live in the flat for at least a year. Just turned twenty-one, Elsbeth's nieces, Julie and Valentina, arrive from America and move in. Their neighbors include Robert, Elsbeth's lover, and Martin, whose wife has fled from his worsening obsessive-compulsive disorder. The twins begin to explore London and venture into the neighboring Highgate Cemetery, where Elsbeth is buried.

Then Elsbeth begins communicating. First with the twins, then with Robert. There are things she wants them to know. And do. As this part of the story unfolds, we learn much about Elsbeth's afterlife as a ghost--the constraints she lives under and the powers she slowly develops. Author Audrey Niffenegger gives us a unique and very personal view of the afterlife.

Its characters are the book's strength. Some emerge briefly. We know solicitor Xavier Roche by what we see during a single visit to his office. The Little Kitten of Death speaks not a word, but has great influence on her human caregivers. However, the book is mostly about pairs of characters and the...asymmetry of their relationships. Julie and Valentina are mirror twins down to their internal anatomies. One remarks that what she sees in the mirror each morning is more her sister than herself. But the twins' different personalities create a tension that is hidden by their identical clothes and shared lives. We understand Robert through flashbacks to his life with Elsbeth, his deeply felt grief at her death, and his conflicted feelings when she returns. And not to be neglected is the touching, never-touching distance relationship between flat-bound Martin and his wife Marijke, away in the Netherlands.

The most impressive presence is London's Highgate Cemetery. We explore its grounds on Richard's early-morning walks and the tours given by volunteer Friends of the Cemetery. We learn its stories and structures from Richard's lengthy, laboriously-written thesis about its history and architecture. It becomes as much of a comfortable, known presence in the story as Chicago's Newberry Library was in The Time Traveler's Wife.

And Audrey Niffenegger's latest book is as enjoyable a read as The Time Traveler's Wife, without any uncomfortable similarities. It is neither a sequel nor drawn from a template. It is an emotional experience to be savored. Yes, one of the characters makes a hard-to-believe decision that shapes the last third of the book. Grit your teeth and let the plot device do its work. Concentrate on the characters, on what they feel and what they make you feel.

This is a book that has disappointed numerous reviewers who expected a standard happy ending. I don't blame this on the author, but on the publisher and the misleading publicity and cover blurbs. For careful readers, hints of the author's intent were there from the beginning. This is a wonderful book, with finely drawn and likeable characters, a brilliant back story, an interesting setting, and a somewhat sinister plot, that held my attention from the first page. I recommend it highly, but NOT to those who are looking for something similar to The Time Traveler's Wife.