Appearances can be deceiving

Yet ANOTHER book using the currently-popular writing style of two stories told concurrently in alternating chapters, which eventually merge as the author slowly reveals the common elements. And though I found myself initially irritated by the style, the story grabbed me, and I found myself staying up late and trying to find stray moments to pick up this book to continue reading.

Each of the two stories is about a mother immersed in the early months of parenthood. Lexie Sinclair (aka Alexandra) is tempestuous, fiercely independent, and bright. At 18, she left Devon for postwar London and was soon deeply involved in the art scene - living in Soho, writing as a critic for a magazine, and deeply in love. Fifty years later Elina is an Finnish artist who just had a baby with her boyfriend Ted. She almost died during delivery, and can't remember anything about her life before the baby. Ted is having his own memory issues -- he is starting to remember disturbing new things about his early childhood.

I love the "period piece" descriptions of 1950's London, the dreamy writing style, and generally the language of the book. The characters came alive, and the story was gripping.

4 out of 4 stars

A Modern Ghost Story

Audrey Niffenegger rose to fame with her story of The Time Traveler's Wife - which I loved because it took place in and around Chicago, and it was fun to recognize music venues, museums, etc. (heck, the main character WORKED at the Newberry Library!) And it was just quirky enough to keep me intrigued -- "What? He travels through time? Does he have any control over where he shows up, or when?" Well, this adventurous and risk-taking author has reached even further into her bag of tricks to come up with Her Fearful Symmetry.
Plot summary: Two 20-year-old twin girls, Julia and Valentina, living with their parents in north suburban Chicago, inherit a London apartment from their mother Emily's twin Elspeth, from whom she has been estranged -- for about 20 years. Hmmm. What's the deal? The catch to the inheritance is that in order to truly win the apartment, they will need to live in it for a year -- and their parents are forbidden to visit. Well, the girls are at loose ends anyway - they've dropped out of at least two universities and are just hanging out at home doing not-much. So off they go, to their grand adventure in London. They meet the other inhabitants of the apartment building. There is Martin, the upstairs neighbor, who suffers from debilitating OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) and whose wife has recently left him as a result. And downstairs is Roger, their Aunt Elspeth's younger lover, who is ostensibly working on a doctoral thesis about the cemetery next-door -- though he seems to be stuck, and instead of writing spends his days giving tours of the historic cemetery and his nights sitting out among the graves. Very soon we find out that Elspeth has NOT left, but her ghost remains. She is frustrated by her in-between state and wants to still feel, touch, and interact with those around her. So she practices her powers until she is able to move objects, turn lights on and off, and communicate with the twins, using an Ouija board. Valentina, the more frail of the twins, is more in-tune with Elspeth -- she can even see her faint image. And Roger comes to love Valentina -- or is it just her connection to Elspeth that he loves?
The novel really gets into both generations of sibling rivalry, love stories, and the existence (or not) of ghosts all around us.

All in all, though it was intriguing, the characters were NOT sympathetic - they were majorly flawed in so many ways that I did not root for them or hope for their wishes to come true. It was a very dark book -- in London it was always rainy and gloomy, Martin had his windows covered with paper to keep out the germs and other "bad stuff," the characters were often depressed or unambitious, and the ending did not redeem anything or anyone.

So, though this is my first time to do so, I can only give this book 2 out of 4 stars.