Niffenegger Audrey
Her Fearful Symmetry
Genre: prose
Annotation:
Six years after the phenomenal success of The Time Traveler`s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger has returned with a spectacularly compelling and haunting second novel set in and around Highgate Cemetery in London.
When Elspeth Noblin dies of cancer, she leaves her London apartment to her twin nieces, Julia and Valentina. These two American girls never met their English aunt, only knew that their mother, too, was a twin, and Elspeth her sister. Julia and Valentina are semi-normal American teenagers with seemingly little interest in college, finding jobs, or anything outside their cozy home in the suburbs of Chicago, and with an abnormally intense attachment to one another.
The girls move to Elspeth`s flat, which borders Highgate Cemetery in London. They come to know the building`s other residents. There is Martin, a brilliant and charming crossword puzzle setter suffering from crippling Obsessive Compulsive Disorder; Marjike, Martin`s devoted but trapped wife; and Robert, Elspeth`s elusive lover, a scholar of the cemetery. As the girls become embroiled in the fraying lives of their aunt`s neighbors, they also discover that much is still alive in Highgate, including perhaps their aunt, who can`t seem to leave her old apartment and life behind.
Niffenegger weaves a captivating story in Her Fearful Symmetry about love and identity, about secrets and sisterhood, and about the tenacity of life even after death.
When Elspeth Noblin dies of cancer, she leaves her London apartment to her twin nieces, Julia and Valentina. These two American girls never met their English aunt, only knew that their mother, too, was a twin, and Elspeth her sister. Julia and Valentina are semi-normal American teenagers with seemingly little interest in college, finding jobs, or anything outside their cozy home in the suburbs of Chicago, and with an abnormally intense attachment to one another.
The girls move to Elspeth`s flat, which borders Highgate Cemetery in London. They come to know the building`s other residents. There is Martin, a brilliant and charming crossword puzzle setter suffering from crippling Obsessive Compulsive Disorder; Marjike, Martin`s devoted but trapped wife; and Robert, Elspeth`s elusive lover, a scholar of the cemetery. As the girls become embroiled in the fraying lives of their aunt`s neighbors, they also discover that much is still alive in Highgate, including perhaps their aunt, who can`t seem to leave her old apartment and life behind.
Niffenegger weaves a captivating story in Her Fearful Symmetry about love and identity, about secrets and sisterhood, and about the tenacity of life even after death.
- Audrey Niffenegger Her Fearful Symmetry
- Part One
- The End
- Last Letter
- A Flower of the Field
- She ’s Leaving Home
- February
- The Mirror Twins
- Bleach
- Night in Highgate Cemetery
- Sunday Afternoon
- The History of Her Ghost
- The Violet Dress
- Boxing Day
- New Year ’s Day
- Part Two
- The Mirror Twins
- Mr. Roche
- The Upstairs Neighbour
- Stalking
- Sick Day
- Valentina and Julia Underground
- The Delicate Thing
- Pearls
- Her Electrical Nature
- Squirrels
- Primrose Hill
- The Little Kitten of Death
- A Tour of Highgate Cemetery
- Breathe
- The Diaries of Elspeth Noblin
- Birthday Greetings
- Postman ’s Park
- Squirrels in Human Form
- Breathe
- Vitamins
- Birthday
- Ghostwriting
- Part Three
- Liminal
- Home Dentistry
- Strays
- Nine Lives
- Spring Fever
- Coming Apart at the Seams
- A Proposition
- Counting
- Test
- The Funeral of the Little Kitten of Death
- He Comes Undone
- Anticipations
- Resurrection Day
- Last Call
- Caught Out
- Vitamins
- Pas de Trois
- Resurrection Day
- Departures
- The End of the Diaries
- Redux
- Visit
- Encounters, Evasions, Detections
- The End
- Acknowledgements
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