Her Fearful Symmetry

Her Fearful Symmetry is a book by Audrey Niffenegger, whom many of you will know wrote The Time Traveller's Wife. I absolutely loved the Time Traveller's Wife and when I came across this book, I figured it'd be just as lovely. It was, but not in the way I had expected.

The story, in a nutshell, is about twins. Specifically identical twins. And the special bonds they have with one another. It begins with the death of a woman named Elspeth. Elspeth lives in London and has an identical twin sister called Edi who lives in America. Unfortunately Elspeth and Edi have not spoken to each other for a number of years. As Elspeth knows that she is about to die, she composes her will, leaving her flat and the majority of her belongings to Edi's identical twin daughters Julia and Valentina. In the will it is stated that the twins are to come to London and live in Elspeth's flat for a year. Only when that year is over can they decide whether they want to continue living in the flat or to sell it. One other condition of the will is that Edi and her husband aren't allowed to enter the flat. They can visit the girls, that's fine, but it cannot be in their flat. As the twins begin to settle into London, Elspeth, now a sort of ghost that cannot leave the flat, begins to make contact with them. As the story progresses, the twins go through changes of character, which leads to a very surprising ending.

The book is written in three parts, all contained within the 386 pages. Each chapter is fairly short, some are only a page long, very easy to read through. It took me quite a while to get into the book at first. The story was fairly subdued and was not instantly grabbing, which is not a great thing for people who like to get hooked on a book right away. You do need a fair bit of patience and persistence to get through this book. It starts to get interesting about halfway through, when Elspeth's attempts at contact finally get noticed. The writing is fairly easy to read, with the occasional bit of language and adult content. On the whole, Her Fearful Symmetry was a quite a unique book.