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Beware of twins

December 19th, 2009 Molly - Central

OK, that’s not really fair.  More specifically, beware of twins in Audrey Niffenegger’s new novel, Her Fearful Symmetry.  I was really looking forward to this book and was prepared to love it.  It’s a spooky story of death and ghosts in and around Highgate Cemetery in London, which is very cool, steeped in history and appropriately eerie. The setting is perfect, the plot is inventive, the supporting characters are complex and the writing is sublime.  But the twins are totally pathological.  And there are two, count ‘em, two sets of twins.

The story begins with estranged twins Edie and Elspeth.  Edie moves to America from Great Britain some twenty years before the start of the novel and has been raising a family with twin daughters, Julia and Valentina, in a Chicago suburb.  Elspeth is still living in London and dies of cancer on the first page of the book.  She leaves her considerable estate to her twin nieces with a couple of considerable stipulations.  They must live in her flat for one year and their parents are not allowed to visit.  The slight, ethereal twins are less than worldly but are up for an adventure and decide to move to London.  They initially wander about dazed and confused in their matching outfits and then things start to heat up.  It appears as though the deceased Aunt Elspeth is still living in the flat and desperately trying to make contact.

As the twins settle in, unaware of the presence of their aunt, they strike up relationships with some interesting characters from their building.  Mousy, shy Valentina takes to Robert, Elspeth’s former lover and Highgate Cemetery tour guide and dissertator.  Bossy Julia befriends Martin, the upstairs neighbor with debilitating OCD.  Now, I’m all for spooky ghost stories set near amazing cemeteries.  But I was more interested in the stories of the supporting characters in this novel than the two sets of twins or the ghosts.  Reading about the twins became sorta tedious for me.  And reading about the ghosts and their spirit wrangling, kinda tedious, too.  Robert and Martin?  Not nearly enough.

Audrey Niffenegger is a fantastic writer and many parts of this book are perfect, but the main characters and ultimately, the ending, did not do it for me.  I am a fan of all types of ghost stories but this one fell flat for me.  I wasn’t sure if I was investing my time in Aunt Elspeth and her ghostly hijinks or the idea of two sets of twins with some seriously scary psychological issues.  And I really just wanted to read more about the neighbors and the Egyptian Avenue of Highgate Cemetery.

So what to do?  It’s still a fun book to read, but if you are looking for a novel that more seamlessly combines the spirit world with some straight up psychological terror, Joe Hill’s Heart Shaped Box is hard to beat.  And I am still planning to read Stephen King’s top pick of the year The Little Stranger, which has gotten tons of raves and was on the short list for the 2009 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.

Entry Filed under: Literary Fiction