I really hadn't intended to read Audrey Niffenegger's Her Fearful Symmetry, but after reading posts like this one and this one and a few gentle urges from one or two readers out there (you know who you are), I decided I couldn't resist. I've never gotten around to reading her previous novel, The Time Traveller's Wife (am I the last person to get to it?), so it just never occurred to me I might want to read this one. But on reflection it really is the perfect October read. I'm working my way through it slowly (the story of my life at the moment it seems), so I'm not really far into it yet, but Niffenegger has me totally intrigued by her characters, the situation they are in, not to mention the lure of secrets I'm hoping will be revealed eventually.
I have a feeling there will be a ghost or two, though maybe not in the form you'd expect. I don't believe in ghosts, but I do think people can be haunted--if not literally than figuratively. There are so many unusual facets to this novel. Twins who are mirror images of each other. The death of a woman who was estranged from her own twin. A man who is obsessive compulsive and won't leave his apartment. Perhaps one of the more atmospheric aspects is that the story is set in part in and near Highgate Cemetery. My teaser is a description of the cemetery, but to get in the right mood, take a look at this post (with accompanying photos) first. It's always nice to have visuals, I think.
As a little background, Robert is one of the main characters, the significant other to Elspeth who has died at the beginning of the book and who has willed her flat to her nieces (the identical twins). The flat abuts Highgate Cemetery, where Robert works.
"Robert's PhD thesis had begun as a work of history: he imagined the cemetery as a prism through which he could view Victorian society at its most sensationally, splendidly, irrationally excessive; in their conflation of hygienic reform and status-conscious innovation, the Victorians created Highgate Cemetery as a theatre of mourning, a stage set of eternal repose. But as he did the research Robert was seduced by the personalities of the people buried in the cemetery, and his thesis began to veer into biography; he got sidetracked by anecdote, fell in love with the futility of elaborate preparations for an afterlife that seemed, at best, unlikely. He began to take the cemetery personally and lost all perspective."
"He often sat with Michael Faraday, the famous scientist; Eliza Barrow, who had been a victim of the notorious serial murderer Frederick Seddon; he spent time brooding over the unmarked graves of foundlings. Robert had whiled away a whole night watching as falling snow covered Lion, the stone dog that kept watch over Thomas Sayers, the last of the bare-fisted prizefighters. Sometimes he borrowed a flower from Radclyffe Hall, who always had an abundance of blooms, and relocated it to some remote and friendless tomb."
Who would have thought a cemetery could be so interesting? I'm glad I gave in to the urgings to read this book as it is turning out to be a page turner.