“Can't believe I'm reading this ... damned reading group ...
I came to this book with a great deal of scepticism and having not read its phenomenally successful predeccesor. Where The Time Traveller's Wife was a slow-burning word-of-mouth commercial success, Her Fearful Symmetry was met with a predictably large amount of reviews questioning its merits. Several different narratives are well-balanced: a ghost (a twin herself) is unable to leave her abode in which her twin nieces come to stay, the former lover of said ghost downstairs and an OCD sufferer upstairs who has recently been abandoned by his wife. In places, Niffenegger's plot exposition is shockingly lazy and begs the question as to where her editor went. Elsewhere, rarely are opportunities missed when it comes to displaying the writer's research into Highgate cemetry -- perhaps downstairs neighbour Robert's 1,000+ page thesis is a tongue-in-cheek prod at the novel's self-evident, unnecessary and frequent details of trivia. Certain events in the novel and the conflict between the young twin sisters are well-written, it is the writerly oversights which spoil what at the very least should be a good yarn. But may God (if there is one) bless the Little Kitten of Death .... incidentally the only character I felt any emotional attachment to.”
