Where's the Fear?

Niffenegger once more ponders on the endless possibilities of the human world, asking the questions: Can someone come back from the dead? Can someone see and talk to phantoms and ghosts?

Her Fearful Symmetry (the title an allusion to William Blake’s poem The Tiger) is set in London, specifically in the famous Highgate Cemetery, the final resting place of Karl Marx and Christina Rossetti, among other personalities.

As she dies of leukemia at 44, Elspeth Noblin leaves her flat (located on the outskirts of the cemetery) to her 20-year-old twin nieces, Julia and Valentina, who has never met their aunt. The girls agree to leave America and move into the London flat, much to the silent objections of their mother, Edie, Elspeth’s twin sister, who have been estranged since their early twenties for reasons revealed later in the book. There are only two conditions once they live in the flat; that they stay there for a year before they sell it and that their parents, Edie and Jack, never enter the flat. It doesn’t take the twins long to agree, and so the dramatic and somewhat peculiar chain of events that will occur throughout the book commences, not only to the twins but to the other characters as well, eventually revealing the scandalous secret between Edie and Elspeth’s strained relationship.

The plot elements failed to amaze me since I’m not convinced it’s an actual ghost story; the vast and history-rich cemetery, an irresolute wandering (yet utterly harmless, at first) ghost of Elspeth, the mirror-image twins, Elspeth’s heartbroken lover; Robert, who is uncertain about his undying feelings for Elspeth and his blossoming attraction to the twins, specifically Valentina, who seemed to be quite the dead ringers for Elspeth. After reading a few chapters you might actually think, “Hey, where’s the actual fear in Her Fearful Symmetry?” And you begin to notice that the promised fear and the atmosphere of the novel itself is clearly lacking, in other words, it’s a colorless and tasteless novel, unlike it’s preceding novel, The Time Travler’s Wife.

Niffenegger, generally speaking, did a clean job with this novel, giving us a clear idea of London and its themes of love, loss and obsession, leading me to believe that this book was written with great and careful love and affection. But otherwise, if you’re looking for a “feel good” book, this isn’t the one for you.