Her Fearful Symmetry
The brilliant new novel from the author of the massive international bestseller, The Time Traveler's Wife now in second format
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Synopsis
At last - another brilliant, original and moving novel from the author of The Time Traveler's Wife in second format. Julia and Valentina Poole are normal American teenagers - normal, at least, for identical 'mirror' twins who have no interest in college or jobs or possibly anything outside their cozy suburban home. But everything changes when they receive notice that an aunt whom they didn't know existed has died and left them her flat in an apartment block overlooking Highgate Cemetery in London. They feel that at last their own lives can begin ... but have no idea that they've been summoned into a tangle of fraying lives, from the obsessive-compulsive crossword setter who lives above them to their aunt's mysterious and elusive lover who lives below them, and even to their aunt herself, who never got over her estrangement from the twins' mother - and who can't even seem to quite leave her flat.... With Highgate Cemetery itself a character and echoes of Henry James and Charles Dickens, Her Fearful Symmetry is a delicious and deadly twenty-first-century ghost story about Niffenegger's familiar themes of love, loss and identity. It is certain to cement her standing as one of the most singular and remarkable novelists of our time.
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Editorial Reviews
"...(Niffenegger) has a knack for taking the romantic into the realm of creepiness, and she constructs a taut mystery around the secret to be found in Elspeth's diaries...It's no small achievement that the revelations are both organic and completely unexpected" - The New Yorker
"Delicious and deadly" - Yorkshire Evening Post
"A powerful and beautiful exploration of the relationships between the living and the dead...Niffenegger's writing has lost none of its emotional power" - Psychologies
"The depiction of Highgate Cemetery and its inhabitants is haunting... and meticulously researched" - The List
"A ghostly love story and a lovely ghost story." - Tatler
"The novel's representation of London rings completely true'; 'The universe of Her Fearful Symmetry is solid and familiar...'; 'This is a rich, involving novel..." - John O'Connell, The Times
"It's been worth the wait...Niffenegger's books are fabulously left field, striking an unlikely balance between romance and fantasy. A brilliantly beautiful book." - Glamour
"Chillingly good" - Eithne Farry, Marie Claire
"A one-off pleasure" - Fanny Blake, Woman & Home
"There's no mistaking Niffenegger's originality or her own commitment to her imagined world. She's a real rarity: at once a good writer and a genuine obsessive" - David Sexton, Evening Standard
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