I liked Audrey Niffenegger's writing style so much that I went right to the library after finishing Her Fearful Symmetry and got The Time Traveler's Wife, her first book.
Symmetry is a ghost story, but first it's literary fiction at its best--a tour de force, I think--but I'm uncertain, really what a tour de force exactly is, although I imagine a fine conductor leading a fine orchestra playing a very creative, nimble work, and that's how I see Niffenegger's writing: nimble, clever (always clever, as are her interesting characters), and creative.
First, she did her homework, seeking out the advice and support of the staff at London's Victorian Highgate Cemetery, and then becoming a tour guide in order to immerse herself in the overgrown, mossy graveyard in which her story takes place.
She developed characters who were uniquely interesting and conflicted and all very likable. She set up a fascinating and surprising plot.
This ghost story has everything--an old Victorian house that backs onto Highgate's west end, mirror twins (they exactly mirror each other, so that one twin's organs are on her right side instead of the left) who inherit a flat in the house, a crossword puzzle maker who also is crippled by his compulsions, and an ingenious ghost...
Her Fearful Symmetry can be read in a day or so, and it will haunt you.
B&N link
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1 comment:
That's what I need: a well-written ghost story that actually haunts. Yum.
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