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Full of crooked relationships, duplicities and twists, Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger is a thick and engrossing gothic tale.
Elspeth Noblin is as dead as dead can get. Or is she? While her remains are interred in London’s renowned Highgate Cemetery, Elspeth undergoes a supernatural and spectral condensation into a ghost within her flat.
A letter arrives for Julia and Valentina Poole 3,000 miles from England containing the will of their Aunt Elspeth, whom they have never met before. She has generously bequeathed her apartment to the twins on the condition that they must live in it for one year before they sell it, and their parents must never enter it, especially their mother and Elspeth’s own twin sister, Edie. Estranged from Elspeth for more than 20 years, Edie is suspicious of Elspeth’s motives. Wary of tricks under her sister’s sleeves, she unwillingly lets her 21-year-old daughters go to London.
Dreaming of fairy tale enchantments and horror stories, the twins have little clue of what is in store for them. They are launched into Elspeth’s world, which is full of secrets, a sinisterly beautiful cemetery and eccentric neighbors. Upstairs lives Martin, a remarkable linguist and crossword writer afflicted by a severe case of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Elspeth’s mysterious ex-lover, the cemetery expert Robert, lives downstairs. Living within their own flat, the girls soon discover a hidden resident — the ghost of Elspeth.
Highgate Cemetery is so seductively eerie that Niffenegger herself worked there as a tour guide. Prominent figures are buried there, including Karl Marx, George Eliot and the parents of Charles Dickens. It was opened in 1839 because England’s overwhelming dead were causing health problems within the city. In Victorian England, it soon became the hotspot for the dead. The ominous cemetery is a world for the dead, London is the land of the living and the Poole twins live somewhere in between.
Those who have come to read and love The Time Traveler’s Wife — and authors like Libba Bray and Kate Morton — will find that Niffenegger has an entirely new and exciting story to offer. Part horror, part science fiction and part fantasy, this book is a perfect read for Halloween enthusiasts excited for the coming holiday.
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