The paragraph-long review of Her Fearful Symmetry in the New Yorker calls it a “gothic story,” and it is, which is why I was willing to forgive some sort of over-the-top plot developments. (I disagree, though, with the last line of that review: I saw a few of the big revelations coming.)
But, right: the story: the book opens with Elspeth Noblin dying of cancer at the age of 44. In her last letter to her estranged twin sister, Edie, who lives in America, she says she’s leaving everything to Edie’s twin daughters. We see Elspeth’s lover (and downstairs neighbor) Robert, just after her death and again at her funeral, and after. We meet Elspeth’s upstairs neighbors, a married couple named Martin and Marijke (he suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder; she’s been planning to leave him, and does). And oh, we meet Elspeth, as a ghost. And then, eventually, we meet the twins themselves, Julia and Valentina. They’re twenty, almost twenty-one, and learn that they will only inherit their aunt’s estate if they live in her flat (which is next to Highgate Cemetery, where she’s buried) for a year before selling it, and don’t let their parents visit them there.
Many of the characters in this book are trapped, in varying ways and varying degrees: Robert is trapped in his grief, Elspeth’s ghost is trapped in her flat, Valentina is trapped by her sister’s bossiness and her own meekness, Martin’s mental illness confines him to his apartment. Some characters are trapped by secrets, or by lies. The twins and Elspeth’s ghost bring a stray kitten inside, then keep it with them. And various characters figure out ways to stop being trapped, or try to: Robert starts a new relationship, Marijke leaves Martin and Martin accepts help, and Valentina and Elspeth, well, there’s a crazy plan and I’ll leave it at that.
I liked the London setting of this book (a highlight is a picnic in Postman’s Park, which I’ve never visited but which sounds really great, and of course Highgate Cemetery, where Robert is a guide/which he’s writing a PhD thesis about) and the occasional humor of it (like when Elspeth’s ghost reads books Valentina leaves out for her, including “some ghost stories,” “in hopes of finding a few tips on haunting”). And once the plot (which starts slow) gets going, I was swept along by it, willing to suspend disbelief and reluctant to put the book down ’til I’d finished it.
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