Book Review: Her Fearful Symmetry

2 Generations of Twins, a Family Secret, and a Soul Unable to Rest in Peace
Review from The New York Times Book Review

Time and the supernatural are at the center of Audrey Niffenegger’s new novel, an entertaining but not terribly resonant ghost story about two generations of twins.

Audrey Niffenegger’s wildly successful first novel, “The Time Traveler’s Wife” (recently turned into a movie), used an old sci-fi device as a springboard for a high-flying meditation on the uncertainties and dislocations of life. In recounting the story of Henry, an involuntary time traveler, and his wife, Clare — who patiently waits for him to return home from his Odysseus-like wanderings through the calendar — Ms. Niffenegger not only conjured two memorable characters, but also created an affecting story about the magical ability of love to transcend time.

Time and the supernatural are also at the center of her new novel, “Her Fearful Symmetry,” an entertaining but not terribly resonant ghost story about two generations of twins, which like all ghost stories, addresses the hold that time past exerts over time present.

Whereas “The Time Traveler’s Wife” simply used the premise of time travel as a device to look at a couple’s efforts to sustain their love through all sorts of trials and tribulations, “Symmetry” buys into the literary and cinematic ghost story genre whole hog, embracing all of its best-known traditions, no matter how hokey or contrived. The novel’s got a haunted house (well, a haunted apartment), a creepy cemetery, a family with a bizarre secret in its past and two naïve young women at the mercy of unearthly forces. True to form, the familiar daylight world of contemporary life is penetrated by a spirit from the great beyond, while the obvious Freudian implications of haunting and being haunted are dutifully explicated and explored.

With “Symmetry,” Ms. Niffenegger has streamlined her storytelling to the point of slickness. This novel charges ahead in a much more straightforward manner than “The Time Traveler’s Wife,” creating suspense through its formulaic adherence to old genre conventions. Although the reader is pleasantly carried along by the author’s ability to create credible characters and her instinctive narrative gifts, the novel lacks the emotional depth of its predecessor; none of the relationships in this novel have the intensity or poignancy of Clare and Henry’s liaison in “The Time Traveler’s Wife.” What’s more, the psychological underpinnings of a crucial decision made by one of this novel’s heroines are fuzzy and unpersuasive — a fundamental flaw that undermines the cogency of the overall story.

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