Her Fearful Symmetry

Okay, so I am generally a fan of mystical realism, and this book is by Audrey Niffenegger, who wrote The Time Traveler’s Wife. So I should have loved it, right? Well, I didn’t. I didn’t hate it, and I finished it in less than a week, so it was definitely interesting. Let me try to describe it.

Valentina and Julia are the twin daughters of Edie, who is the twin of Elspeth. Edie and Elspeth haven’t spoken in 20 years, and live on opposite sides of the Atlantic, but when Elspeth dies she leaves everything to the twin girls. The only caveat is they must live in her flat for a year, and their parents are not allowed in the place. That sounds like an interesting story, doesn’t it?

Things start to get weird after the girls move to the flat in London. They meet Robert, Elspeth’s much younger lover and neighbor, who develops an attraction for one of the twins. And they meet the ghost of Elspeth, who is trapped in the flat.

The plot takes some very strange turns, and I sort of saw the end coming but was still a bit shocked by it. The most striking thing to me about this novel was that I really didn’t care for any of the characters, except Robert and Martin, another neighbor in London. I found the twins to be vapid, insipid girls, and Elspeth selfish and conniving. And there is a “big family secret” that doesn’t really seem to add much to the plot, except to give the reader an idea of the kind of people we’re dealing with.

As I said, it was interesting, and I wanted to find out what happened, but it was creepy, and I felt a little dirty. It’s definitely NOT a book I’ll read again, but it wasn’t a waste of time.