Her Fearful Symmetry

By Audrey Niffenegger
Simon and Schuster US (September 2009)

Book review by Aiza Valenzuela

After the runaway success of her debut novel, The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger said she set out to write something completely different from it. With Her Fearful Symmetry, her second novel, the author definitely succeeded.

In parts classic ghost story and supernatural drama, Her Fearful Symmetry starts with cancer-stricken Elspeth Noblin dying. Before she passes, she decides to leave her London apartment to her nieces, 21-year-old twins Julia and Valentina, daughters of her own twin sister, who she hasn’t seen or talked to for years.

When the twins arrive in England, they meet their eccentric neighbors: Robert Fanshaw, Elspeth’s melancholy and much younger lover; and Martin Wells, the brilliant and polite crossword-puzzle setter who suffers from extreme obsessive-compulsive disorder. And surprisingly, the girls encounter Elspeth, who inexplicably finds herself haunting her old apartment. (Yes, I did mention that this is a ghost story.)