Do you believe in Ghosts?

Ghost stories. Not really something I’ve ever been a fan of or picked up by choice, but the supernatural is all the rage at the moment with vampires and guardian angels being the new craze in our bookshops and on TV, the way true crime books and forensic science shows have been popular in the past.

Her Fearful Symmetry is Audrey Niffenegger’s follow up novel to The Time Traveller’s Wife, the latter I really enjoyed despite the rather Doctor Who like plot. Her Fearful Symmetry has the same other world type of feel – bloodless looking main characters, a creepy setting in an old mansion next to one of the most famous cemeteries in London, and a ghost. During 19th century London, all things macabre were very fashionable and Highgate Cemetery, which is the cemetery in the book, was a popular place to “take the air” at the time.  Her Fearful Symmetry seems to have absorbed some of this spookiness.

For those not familiar with the story, here’s a little synopsis from the Random House website:

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....

For me, the most interesting aspect of the novel is the characters. The two main characters, Valentina and Julia, did not appeal to me at the beginning of the book as I didn’t find them particularly believable and not very likeable. They are American from a middle class family but have no ambition for education or employment. Very un-American. They are also twins and initially I thought that Niffenegger portrayed them in a stereotypical way; they dress the same, never do anything without the other, and generally act like one person. As the story progressed I realised that the relationship between the twins wasn’t the symbiotic one that is most often portrayed, but a suffocating one which would have far more sinister implications.  I still didn’t like them, but they became part of a greater theme in the novel - that of obsession. I felt that this theme complimented the spookiness of the other aspects of the novel, and thus, Niffenegger made me believe in the unbelievable, without feeling that it didn’t fit.

The idea of the novel being held together by the characters' obsessions was put into my mind by this review I read in the New York Times, and I think this is what lifted the novel from a plot that we’ve heard before to a more sophisticated product.

I was most drawn to the supporting characters - the twin’s mother and aunt, Elspeth, and her sister Edie (Edwina), Robert, Elspeth’s younger lover, and Martin who lives in the apartment upstairs. With Elspeth and Edie, the idea of history repeating itself is hinted during the novel making me want to read on to see how the story ends. Why was it in Elspeth’s will that the twins had to live in the apartment for 12 months as a condition of their inheritance? What is the big secret between Elspeth and Edie that meant that Edie was explicitly forbidden by Elspeth's will from visiting her children at the apartment during this time?

Robert is devastated by Elspeth’s death by cancer at only 44. He is a frustrating character, in that sometimes he portrayed the grieving lover and obsessed historian convincingly, and then he would do something that seemed at odds with the person I was getting to know. At one point he seems to be getting on with his life, and then he regresss when Elspeth appears as a ghost after the twins move into the apartment.  This fulfils his ultimate wish, doesn’t it? Is Elspeth the type of ghost you want to be around or maybe we should be careful of what we wish for?

Martin’s obsession is the most overt of all the characters, as he is trapped in his apartment by Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. His story was beautifully written and I felt I really understood the conflict in his mind between his understanding that he was ill but not being able to do anything about it, and needing an outside catalyst to make himself change. I’m not sure I believed the ending to his story – the time line was a bit short in my opinion - but you can make your own mind up about this if you read the novel.

After finishing the novel, I went searching for other people’s reactions to it which is something I try not to do until I have written my own thoughts down. It didn’t surprise me to find that most readers either loved it or hated it. Similar to The Time Traveller’s Wife, it does require a suspension of your sense of reality, and I got the feeling that many readers found this a little difficult to come to terms with. The broader popularity of The Time Traveller’s Wife is, in my opinion, due to the incorporation of a love story, which enabled those who were uncomfortable with the time travelling premise, to still enjoy the book. Her Fearful Symmetry has to stand on its own two feet without the prop of a handsome man falling in love with a beautiful woman. Personally, I liked the author’s engaging writing, characters, and unique plot which was so different from other things I have been reading lately. It has a bit of mystery (a little clichéd I admit), and the twins are somewhat creepy, but it flowed along.  Don’t expect to have the same reaction to this novel as you did to The Time Traveller’s Wife, but if you enjoyed The Time Traveller’s Wife, then you might like to give it a go.