Fearfully Asymmetrical: Her Fearful Symmetry

I loved The Time Traveler’s Wife so passionately that I couldn’t wait for Audrey Niffenegger’s next novel, Her Fearful Symmetry , and I actually broke my rule (used copies only) and purchased a new trade paper copy. And was awfully disappointed. I had looked forward to the setting – London’s Highgate Cemetery, where Niffenegger is a guide and where are buried some significant Victorian authors and artists. I suppose that I expected too much from the book in my anticipation.

In fact, I felt very uncomfortable with the characters and the story – as I suppose could have been the intention with what amounts to a ghost story. Even the font employed for the chapter titles made me uneasy, with its sketchy lack of symmetry – again, perhaps an intended effect. That is not to say that the novel is not well-conceived or well-written: it is both, although Niffenegger’s prose tends to be static and visually-oriented. But even that makes sense since she is primarily a graphic novelist.

For some reason this book reminded me of Tim Powers’ 1989 novel, The Stress of Her Regard. That one also left me feeling disturbed in a similar way. (Enough so that I still shudder when I think of it, and I read it when it was published.) I guess the operative term for both novels might be “creepy.” Which, of course, some people really love. I have just never relished that kind of creepiness – like Stephen King’s Pet Sematary. I can neither believe it nor enjoy it.

The novel also ends on an ambiguous note that I always feel is a bit of a cheat.
I think my favorite character in this book is Martin, whose OCD is so bad he can’t leave his apartment, but who eventually pulls himself together (with a little help from his friends and some medication) to make the journey to Amsterdam to join his estranged wife. The main characters never really seem to have much gumption or purposefulness, except perhaps for the one who is dead.

This font style that I mentioned puzzled me, though. I can’t tell if it is supposed to look like Victorian iron work or script, or if it is just intended to be unsettling. If the latter case, it achieves its goal. It is both difficult to read at times, and kind of … well….creepy.