Her Fearful Symmetry – Danielle Wood

Book Review >>> Danielle Wood Her Fearful Symmetry

Niffenegger, Audrey. New York: Scribner, 2009. 419 pp.

Her Fearful Symmetry, Audrey Niffenegger’s second novel, raises both similar and dissimilar issues from her first novel, The Time Traveler’s Wife. A noticeable theme in Niffenegger’s writing is the power of the written word. Both novels employ a focus on the relationships between characters and the ways in which they communicate with one another throughout the text, of which journaling and letter writing are most evident in Her Fearful Symmetry. Niffenegger opens the novel with a letter received by Edie Poole, written to her by her estranged twin sister Elspeth; “The letters arrived every two weeks. They did not come to the house. Every second Thursday, Edwina Noblin Poole drove six miles to the Highland Park Post Office, two towns away from her home in Lake Forest. She had a PO box there, a small one. There was never more than one letter in it” (5). It is indecipherable to the reader as to why Edie would be receiving a letter from Elspeth when they have not seen or spoken to one another in nearly twenty years. Upon moving to America from London with her husband, Jack Poole, Edie birthed a set of twins as well, Julia and Valentina. Both Julia and Valentina become the main characters of the novel when they, at the age of twenty, inherit all of their aunt Elspeth’s belongings upon her death. The novel takes place in Elspeth’s London apartment, near the famous Highgate Cemetery, burial site of Karl Marx and Elspeth Noblin. After moving to London to live in their aunt’s apartment, the girls spend the remainder of the novel trying to uncover the secrets of their mother and aunt’s past. The twins encounter many interesting characters during their stay in London, which shape their experience and growth as individuals without their parents looking over their shoulders for the first time in their lives. Niffenegger’s novel is clearly fiction, though she does incorporate many realistic situations between her characters. When it comes to the sibling relationships between Edie and Elspeth and Julia and Valentina, I believe many people would be able to relate issues and struggles in the novel between the sisters to their own experiences with their siblings. Julia and Valentina are young girls in their early twenties who are experiencing independent life for the first time, while Edie and Jack are going through empty nest syndrome when their girls leave for London. Julia and Valentina are twins that have always done everything together, not having created their own personal identity, which is something Valentina strives to discover in London. Along their journey towards finding themselves, the girls encounter many peculiar characters in London. Martin, their upstairs neighbor, is by far the most abnormal character in the novel, “a slender, neatly made man with graying close-cropped hair and pointed nose. Everything about him was nervous and quick, knobbly and slanted. He had Welsh

blood and a low tolerance for cemeteries” (9). Martin is extremely obsessive compulsive and never leaves his apartment with the exception of Elspeth’s funeral. The characters and relationships in this novel are what make it so great and easy to read. Niffenegger’s second novel is certainly worth reading whether you have read The Time Traveler’s Wife or not. Those who love Time Traveler’s Wife will be anything but disappointed with her second novel, even though it is not a sequel to her first bestseller. In Her Fearful Symmetry, Niffenegger creates an atmosphere of mystery and suspense. The reader is continuously trying to solve the mystery of Edie and Elspeth while wondering how their past will affect Julia and Valentina’s future. This book is difficult to put down, especially for those who love suspense. The book is set around the year 2003 in London and Chicago and is most likely targeted at audiences who enjoy modern writing. London, however, is very different from Chicago as the twins learn shortly after their arrival at their new home. Niffenegger is able to create a realistic London atmosphere with the setting of the novel due to her experience as a tour guide at the Highgate Cemetery. Through living this experience, Niffenegger incorporates a great deal of accurate history of the cemetery. Robert, Elspeth’s lover, is a historian and working on writing his thesis about Highgate. While working on his thesis, Robert “imagined the cemetery as a prism through which he could view Victorian society at its most sensationally, splendidly, irrationally excessive; in their conflation of hygienic reform and status-conscious innovation, the Victorians had created Highgate Cemetery as a theatre of mourning, a stage set of external repose” (53). It was effortless to place myself in the time and place of the story while reading this book, which is attributed to Niffenegger’s strength of developing setting and characters within her novels. If given time and exposure, Her Fearful Symmetry could easily become a second bestseller for fairly new author, Audrey Niffenegger.