{"id":6939,"date":"2015-03-09T21:41:56","date_gmt":"2015-03-10T01:41:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lettersandsodas.com\/books\/?p=6939"},"modified":"2015-03-09T21:41:56","modified_gmt":"2015-03-10T01:41:56","slug":"her-fearful-symmetry-by-audrey-niffeneggerscribner-simon-and-schuster-2009","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/her-fearful-symmetry-by-audrey-niffeneggerscribner-simon-and-schuster-2009\/","title":{"rendered":"Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey NiffeneggerScribner (Simon and Schuster), 2009"},"content":{"rendered":"

The paragraph-long review<\/a> of Her Fearful Symmetry<\/em> in the New Yorker calls it a \u201cgothic story,\u201d 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.) <\/p>\n

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\u2019s leaving everything to Edie\u2019s twin daughters. We see Elspeth\u2019s lover (and downstairs neighbor) Robert, just after her death and again at her funeral, and after. We meet Elspeth\u2019s upstairs neighbors, a married couple named Martin and Marijke (he suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder; she\u2019s 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\u2019s estate if they live in her flat (which is next to Highgate Cemetery, where she\u2019s buried) for a year before selling it, and don\u2019t let their parents visit them there. <\/p>\n

Many of the characters in this book are trapped, in varying ways and varying degrees: Robert is trapped in his grief, Elspeth\u2019s ghost is trapped in her flat, Valentina is trapped by her sister\u2019s bossiness and her own meekness, Martin\u2019s mental illness confines him to his apartment. Some characters are trapped by secrets, or by lies. The twins and Elspeth\u2019s 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\u2019s a crazy plan and I\u2019ll leave it at that. <\/p>\n

I liked the London setting of this book (a highlight is a picnic in Postman\u2019s Park<\/a>, which I\u2019ve never visited but which sounds really great, and of course Highgate Cemetery, where Robert is a guide\/which he\u2019s writing a PhD thesis about) and the occasional humor of it (like when Elspeth\u2019s ghost reads books Valentina leaves out for her, including \u201csome ghost stories,\u201d \u201cin hopes of finding a few tips on haunting\u201d). 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The paragraph-long review of Her Fearful Symmetry in the New Yorker calls it a \u201cgothic story,\u201d 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6939\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}