A ghost story unlike any other

Audrey Niffenegger's Her Fearful Symmetry explores the supernatural

By Kelly Skinner
Published: September 30th, 2009 | 1:10pm

First, she took time and bent it into a sci-fi tragic romance; now the subject matter is death and the afterlife. Her Fearful Symmetry, Audrey Niffenegger's second novel to her debut bestseller, The Time Traveler's Wife, is powered again by the author's fabulous diction and dialogue, and like Traveler's it is beautiful for its unusualness. In this far darker tale of superstition, haunting, love, and relationships, Niffenegger is at the pinnacle of her craft. There is an earnestness here that was absent before. As a cemetery guide herself, perhaps it is the desire to throw open the window to the afterlife — or perhaps it is her desire to evoke a greater appreciation for cemeteries that inspires her colorfully frightening tale.

The book begins in England with Niffenegger's point perfect description of the little things that make life's tragedies so tragic. "Elspeth died while Robert was standing in front of a vending machine watching tea shoot into a small paper cup." On the other side of the ocean in Chicago, Elspeth's twin Edie feels nothing when her estranged sister dies. A mysterious letter arrives bequeathing Elspeth's flat to her twin nieces Julia and Valentina whom she has never met before, with the fine print that their mother (Edie) and father never be allowed inside.

An interconnected story line evolves among the twins and the tenants they meet in their apartment complex that overlooks historic Highgate Cemetery. There is the love story of the hopelessly obsessive compulsive Martin and the wife who left him, the staff of the cemetery down below, the day to day events of Elspeth's new life as a ghost trapped in her old flat, the trials of Elspeth's lover, Robert, and the strange relationship between twins.

We move between stories, the living and the dead, the United States and England, and tea and coffee as easily as we once moved through time. The greatest moments are the small ones: descriptions of foods, Elspeth's dissection of things in her flat, Robert's small actions of mourning, and the threads that connect one human to another.

Her Fearful Symmetry is fearful indeed with two sets of twins and all four resembling one another quite well. But for those who may think, "Hmm...I've heard this somewhere before," fear not. The Thirteenth Tale (another amazing story about ghosts and twins) is nothing like Her Fearful Symmetry.

The book is chock full of small observations, and while there are a ton of ideas that Niffenegger plays around with here, one that resonated the most for me was Elspeth's revelation of what makes life worth living: "touching, bodies, drinking, that heat in the throat, substance."

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ABOUT THE BOOK
Her Fearful Symmetry (Scribner)
By Audrey Niffenegger
416 pages
$26.99