Book Week: Her Fearful Symmetry

Hello and welcome to Book Week on WAHM-BAM! This week will be all about books and reading, with reviews and giveaways and some other reading-related posts. (There will also probably be some of the normal general mish-mash of posts, too, so don’t worry if books don’t interest you – though… really?)

To start the week off, we have a review of Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger (author of The Time Traveler’s Wife) and you’ll also have the chance of winning a copy of it for yourself.

 

Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

As with The Time Traveler’s Wife, Her Fearful Symmetry is a strange and almost magical tale. It is set amid some version of reality or normality that feels maybe just a little off – one that perhaps is still steeped in the fifties, but has in other ways moved further into the twentieth, or indeed twenty-first century. And everything is normal, apart from the bits that aren’t.

This is a story of twins, of ghosts, of love, of mental health (or ill-health) and, very importantly, of Highgate Cemetery. We all know a bit about Highgate Cemetery – well, at the very least we know that Karl Marx’s grave is there – but this novel delves much, much deeper and really brings the cemetery to life, making it as much a character as any of the humans – dead or alive.

Twins – and there are two sets of them in this novel – can bring with them mystery or mayhem in literature (Twelfth Night, Alice in Wonderland) and they hold a sway over those of us who have little or no experience with them. Especially identical twins, and the even rarer mirror twins. The novel also explores love – motherly love and sisterly love, as well as the less platonic kind – and digs a little into the complexities of the human mind, in particular the nature of obsessive compulsive disorder.

And, yes, it’s also a ghost story and does delight and tantalise with building up tension and fear in the tradition of the ghost story, while also departing from the norms of the genre considerably.

This is beautifully written literary fiction that also succeeds in grasping and keeping your attention. A page turner that will make you pause to consider a phrase or a scene.

I would highly recommend it.

Win a copy of Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

And, if you’d like a chance to win a copy, courtesy of Galaxy, leave a comment here saying so. You can also have an extra entry if you leave a comment on this post on the WAHM-BAM Facebook page or if you tweet a link to it. The draw will be made on Christmas Day and I’ll announce the winner here and contact them direct. (UK entries only)

Take a look at Galaxy’s Facebook page, too, for lots more book goodies and discussion.

Keep reading for the rest of Book Week for more book reviews, book-related posts and at least one more book giveaway.