Her Fearful Symmetry

By Audrey Niffenegger (Jonathon Cape, RRP $38.99)

Her Fearful Symmetry

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Horror

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Audrey Niffenegger's debut novel, The Time Traveler's Wife, was a best-selling sensation, and a pretty good story. So for her second novel, Niffenegger did what most debut authors don't: she took her time.

Five years, to be exact, and the result is the incredibly moving and atmospheric ghost story Her Fearful Symmetry.

There are shifting points of view throughout the story, told by multiple narrators, but Niffenegger's writing is so tight that you never get lost.

Julia and Valentina Poole are mirror twins; at 20, they're drifting along, not having settled into college or any kind of job. When their estranged aunt Elspeth, their mother's twin sister she hasn't spoken to in years, leaves them her flat in London in her will, it sets off a chain reaction that couldn't have been predicted.

After her untimely death from cancer, Elspeth finds herself haunting her old flat, unable to leave. She haunts the twins, and their downstairs neighbour Robert, who had been Elspeth's lover.

It's hard to fairly describe Her Fearful Symmetry without giving away too much of the plot. There are ghosts, and a Kitten of Death.

Highgate Cemetery in London – where Robert is a guide – is almost a separate character in itself and so vividly realised you can almost see the tombstones.

The most human characters in the book are married couple Martin and Marijke, who live upstairs from the twins. Martin suffers from crippling OCD and Marijke leaves him, ultimately unable to deal with it. Against these two sharply drawn characters, Robert, Julia, Valentina and Elspeth do fade slightly, even though this is primarily the twins' story.

Her Fearful Symmetry is best read on a cold winter's night, but it supplies so many of its own chills that it doesn't really matter.

Dan Brown aside, this is the release of 2009.

- © Fairfax NZ News