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Her Fearful Symmetry | LitPick Book Reviews
Her Fearful Symmetry
Her Fearful Symmetry: A Novel
Her Fearful Symmetry
Audrey Niffenegger
Amazon Best of the Month, September 2009: Following her breakout bestseller, The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger returns with Her Fearful Symmetry, a haunting tale about the complications of love, identity, and sibling rivalry. The novel opens with the death of Elspeth Noblin, who bequeaths her London flat and its contents to the twin daughters of her estranged twin sister back in Chicago. These 20-year-old dilettantes, Julie and Valentina, move to London, eager to try on a new experience like one of their obsessively matched outfits. Historic Highgate Cemetery, which borders Elspeth's home, serves as an inspired setting as the twins become entwined in the lives of their neighbors: Elspeth's former lover, Robert; Martin, an agoraphobic crossword-puzzle creator; and the ethereal Elspeth herself, struggling to adjust to the afterlife. Niffenegger brings these quirky, troubled characters to marvelous life, but readers may need their own supernatural suspension of disbelief as the story winds to its twisty conclusion. --Brad Thomas Parsons

Book Details

Genre: 

  • Fiction
  • Paranormal
  • Series

Age Level: 

  • 12 and up
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Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger is a new and unique twist on a typical ghost story. The story begins with the death of Elspeth, who is involved with Robert, a graduate student living in the apartment downstairs from her. Elspeth is estranged from her sister, Edie. Edie has two twin daughters, Julia and Valentina who have been left Elspeths apartment in London but only on the condition that they live in it for one year before they sell it and they must not let their parents enter the premises.

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