I felt the
same way about Valentina at the start of Audrey Niffenegger’s new book, Her
Fearful Symmetry. Valentina and her twin, Julia, live in the Chicago suburbs
with their parents after leaving behind a string of colleges they tried out for
a semester or two. They inherit their Aunt Elspeth’s flat in London and the
book follows the twins and their neighbors in the house adjacent to Highgate
Cemetery. Julia is aggressive and bossy with Valentina, and at first Valentina
never stands up to her twin. A few chapters in, I realized I liked Valentina
and her kindness, dreaminess, and interest in fashion so much more than the
one-dimensional, bossy Julia. I was disappointed in Niffenegger for letting
Julia’s character waft leading to my inability to relate to her. Then I turned
the page. And there was the story from Julia’s point of view. Have you ever had
a two-sided conversation with a book? I asked, “What should I know about
Julia?” and the book said, “Well, let me tell you about her.” Beautiful.
Niffenegger
also reached out to me by using feline imagery throughout the book. I am a
total cat person (if you’ve been reading this blog for some time, you know that).
The author brings a kitten into the lives of the twins in their London flat.
Valentina tries to befriend and domesticate the cat, while Julia only interacts
with the cat as a way to interact with her twin. I learned a lot about the
twins in their relations to the cat, known as The Little Kitten of Death. Later, in a
scene where one character, Jessica, comes out to her yard to witness an
unfolding scene of mayhem among her grandchildren, Niffenegger describes the
children’s reaction: “The children instantly stopped what they were
doing and looked self-conscious, like cats that have fallen off something
ungracefully and now sit licking themselves, pretending nothing has happened.”
If you’ve ever lived with or loved a cat, you know exactly how those children
looked. I have a feeling Niffenegger knows her audience is filled with cat
people.
In
addition to Julia and Valentina, their mother, Edie, and their aunt Elspeth,
were also twins. They are twins who are so reliant on one another and so
intertwined, which leads to the inability to lead singular lives. If you knew twins like Valentina and Julia in real life, they
would seem strange. They sleep in the same bed, make all decisions together,
dress alike even though they are in their early twenties, and have trouble
dating because they don’t understand how boys or men will fit into their
combined life. Niffenegger presents these behaviors in such a way that they
come across as a bit scary and maybe unhealthy, but also beautiful and somewhat
relatable. I remember thinking, “Oh, this is what it’s like to be a twin.” In
her review over at Pajiba, Jennifer speaks to the author’s ability to make the
“incredible seem absolutely believable.”
In her first book, Niffenegger makes her readers believe in time travel
and understand what it might be like to love a time traveler. In this book, she
made me believe in ghosts and the possibility that twins may each feel like one
half of a whole, even though we non-twins see them as individuals.
As Jennifer writes in her review, the book takes some absurdly complicated turns in the last few chapters. The book is never uninteresting, however, and the writing, the story, and the imagery make the book worth a read. And if you want to get even more out of it, read Her Fearful Symmetry on a business trip like I did. There’s nothing like reading a good ghost story before bed and waking up in a dark, unfamiliar hotel room in the middle of the night.
Part of cannonball read. Next up: Zoology.
