Her Fearful Symmetry - Softcover

NATIONAL BESTSELLER "An engrossing read by someone who really knows how to keep a story rolling. . . . she makes us really care about her characters, but it's her storytelling chops that make Her Fearful Symmetry a winner." -- "NOW" (Toronto) "[An] awesomely good read." -- "Chatelaine " "Quirkily observed and rich on every level: plot, character, mood and theme. . . . She conjures a memorable world, and grants most of her characters happy endings, though perhaps not the ones they would have asked for." -- "The Globe and Mail " "Entertaining. . . . The reader is pleasantly carried along by the author's ability to create credible characters and her instinctive narrative gifts. . . . The most powerful parts of Her Fearful Symmetry . . . deal not with paranormal events but with the ordinary pleasures and frustrations of life." -- "The New York Times " "Niffenegger deftly creates and maintains suspense. . . . Niffenegger has created a startling cast of characters whose eccentricities make them both more memorable and more believable." -- "The Gazette " "A modern Victorian novel revolving around a London cemetery, ghostly hauntings and a well-kept secret. . . . A bewitching modern-gothic tale that is at once unsettling and intriguing." -- "Chicago Sun-Times " "Talk about time travel: The novel blends the history of London's famed Highgate Cemetery, the remarkable phenomena of mirror-image twins and the question of life after death into a ghost story that feels as if it could have been written a century ago." -- "National Post " "Odd and disturbing but intensely mesmerizing and memorable. . . . Niffenegger spins such a riveting story -- just like she did in The Time Traveler's Wife -- that suspending disbelief is a pleasure. . . . Niffenegger's writing is bewitching. . . . Niffenegger delivers with great skill a chilling and haunting story." -- "The Miami Herald " "Vivid prose. . . . Perverse f

dearest e,
I told you I would let you know-so here it is-goodbye.
I try to imagine what it would feel like if it was you-but it's impossible to conjure the world without you, even though we've been apart so long.
I didn't leave you anything. You got to live my life. That's enough. Instead I'm experimenting-I've left the whole lot to the twins. I hope they'll enjoy it.
Don't worry, it will be okay.
Say goodbye to Jack for me.
Love, despite everything,
e

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....
With Highgate Cemetery itself a character and echoes of Henry James and Charles Dickens, HER FEARFUL SYMMETRY is a delicious and deadly twenty-first-century ghost story about Niffenegger's familiar themes of love, loss and identity. It is certain to cement her standing as one of the most singular and remarkable novelists of our time.