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Her Fearful Symmetry, by Audrey Niffenegger

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The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffennegger is one those books for me: my copy is dog-earred, bruised and battered, the victim of accidental bath-dunkings and spine-crackings. It looks, in short, like a loved teddy bear with only one eye. Jen, Polly and I have been waiting for Her Fearful Symmetry for a while now; Polly was there when the proof arrived and so had first dibs. When she passed it on to me, she commented that she had liked it, but in completely different way to The Time Traveler’s Wife. Having read Her Fearful Symmetry, I think I agree.

Elspeth Noblin dies, leaving her flat overlooking Highgate Cemetery to her twin American nieces, even though she has only seen them once and has an acrimonious relationship with her own twin sister. Julia and Valentina decide to live there, meeting the other residents of the nearby flats, for example Robert, Elspeth’s long-term boyfriend and Martin, the OCD sufferer from upstairs. Much of the book is also from the point of view of Elspeth herself.

If this sounds like a thoroughly uninteresting beginning, it’s because I can’t tell you anything else, for fear of giving away any of the numerous plot twists. The premise seems almost like a Scotland Street book, but rapidly becomes very, very creepy; in fact it reminded strongly of The Prestige. Highgate Cemetery itself sets the tone for the book: the home of people dead for perhaps hundreds of years, yet somehow made eerily present by visitors, students like Robert and Audrey Niffenegger herself. Elspeth is present and yet not present – powerless and yet also incredibly dominant. Julia and Valentina are technically separate people and yet often one seems submerged by the other; Martin is beseiged by anxieties that are an anathema to his job as a crossword compiler, and yet in the context of the rest of the book he seems amazingly sane.

Audrey Niffenegger has the talent of all good storytellers to make you believe for a short period after you put the book down that clocks really can strike thirteen. I thought Her Fearful Symmetry was skilfully and meticulously written, even the British characters who I was worried would be a sort of hyperreal version of “Britishness” or just Americans who lived in Britain (I was consciously looking out for Americanisms that had slipped through the editing process into the characters’ mouths- the only two I found were ‘xerox’ and a uk.com email address). I can’t say that I enjoyed Her Fearful Symmetry exactly, because at one point I put it in a drawer so that I could sleep properly, but it is a compelling book you can thoroughly live in for the duration of your read.