num_pages: 406
description: Six years after the phenomenal success of The Time Traveler's Wife Audrey Niffenegger has returned with a spectacularly compelling and haunting second novel set in and around Highgate Cemetery in London.When Elspeth Noblin dies of cancer she leaves her London apartment to her twin nieces Julia and Valentina. These two American girls never met their English aunt only knew that their mother too was a twin and Elspeth her sister. Julia and Valentina are semi-normal American teenagers--with seemingly little interest in college finding jobs or anything outside their cozy home in the suburbs of Chicago and with an abnormally intense attachment to one another.The girls move to Elspeth's flat which borders Highgate Cemetery in London. They come to know the building's other residents. There is Martin a brilliant and charming crossword puzzle setter suffering from crippling Obsessive Compulsive Disorder; Marjike Martin's devoted but trapped wife; and Robert Elspeth's elusive lover a scholar of the cemetery. As the girls become embroiled in the fraying lives of their aunt's neighbors they also discover that much is still alive in Highgate including--perhaps--their aunt who can't seem to leave her old apartment and life behind.Niffenegger weaves a captivating story in Her Fearful Symmetry about love and identity about secrets and sisterhood and about the tenacity of life--even after death.
language: English
title: Her Fearful Symmetry
publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd