Her Fearful Symmetry: A Novel (Unabridged Edition)
by Audrey Niffenegger, Bianca Amato (Reader)
Length: 13 hrs and 48 min
Audio CD, Published 2009 by Simon & Schuster Audio, Unabridged Edition
ISBN-10: 0743599306, ISBN-13: 9780743599306
I pre-ordered this audio book from audible.com. However, I was three hours into it when I decided I cannot stand it. Then, I’m at a loss for what to listen on my iPod because my iTunes doesn’t take in audio CD. Horrible of iTunes, I know. But they cannot or will not fix it. So, I went back to audible books I have.
Now, I’m on hour 10 and I’m enjoying the story very much. The narrator, when she does Julia’s voice, sounds like Wynona Ryder. It was all confusing at first, and frankly, after Time Traveller’s Wife, it came out really slow and a lot boring.
But, if you hang in there, you’ll find yourself liking the story. It’s actually clever. But don’t go into it with a set of expectations…that will only hinder your enjoyment of the book. It picks up, for me, about halfway through. Have you read this book? Have you listened to it? What did you think of it?
Description from Amazon.com
Audrey Niffenegger’s spectacularly compelling second novel opens with a letter that alters the fate of every character. Julia and Valentina Poole are semi-normal American twenty-year-olds with seemingly little interest in college or finding jobs. Their attachment to one another is intense. One morning the mailman delivers a thick envelope to their house in the suburbs of Chicago. From a London solicitor, the letter informs Valentina and Julia that their English aunt Elspeth Noblin, whom they never knew, has died of cancer, and left them her London apartment. There are two conditions to this inheritance: that they live in it for a year before they sell it; and that their parents may not enter it. Julia and Valentina are twins. So were the estranged Elspeth and Edie, their mother.
The girls move to Elspeth’s flat, which borders the vast and ornate Highgate Cemetery. Julia and Valentina come to know the residents of their building. 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.Author of one of the most beloved first novels in recent years, Niffenegger returns with an unnerving, unforgettable and enchanting ghost story, a novel about love and identity, secrets and sisterhood, and the tenacity of life — even after death.
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