Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I have to admit that only my admiration for Audrey Niffenegger’s first novel, “The Time Traveler's Wife” (which I found it stunning, compelling, and very original) made me to finish her second novel, “Her Fearful Symmetry”…or cemetery. Otherwise, I am pretty sure, I would have put it away after its first half played (I actually listened the audiobook).


The exploration of love beyond life and time continues also in “Hear Fearful Symmetry”. And not only love, but also identity. A pretty ambitious subject that perhaps was a little bit too much, this time, for Niffenegger. She started well, by creating that cold and ethereal atmosphere of death, that painful feeling of loss and sorrow. But soon she got lost and stuck in those too many threads that she had woven for launch the story. A far too many characters: two pairs of twins, a couple who gets apart, a PhD lover who never ends his thesis, a husband who pretends he doesn’t know who is his wife, an old pair that (misleadingly?) looks like keeping an old secret, and a poor kitten that has twice to die in order to reveal some peculiar forces of … a ghost!! And then another ghost, and many others. And also many plots that fail to merge. The result is a “ghosthic” story, inconsistent, un-deepen and, what is worse, unreasoned. The only exception from this disastrous literary attempt is the cemetery: Highgate Cemetery given by Niffenegger in all its glory!
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