I so wanted to love this book. I wanted to love it when I first heard about it, I wanted to love it when I got it for a birthday present, I wanted to love it when I started reading it and I wanted to love it when I’d finished.
But, in the end, the sum of its many awesome parts just didn’t add up to something I loved. Oh sure, I liked it. But I’ve read The Time Traveller’s Wife (also by Niffenegger), the first book in AGES to make me bawl like a baby, and the first book in AGES to make me read all the way through in just two sessions (I don’t have time for those sorts of shenanigans these days, oh for being a student again, except with more money). And I loved that book. It was a non-stop barrel of a read, plus it was well-written, plus it was all romantic, plus it ended perfectly. And whilst this should have been just as brilliant, it never made it.
As said Her Fearful Symmetry has many cool parts – Highgate Cemetery, ghosts, mirror twins, OCD, Little Kitten of Death – the perfect makings of a tale of love and creepiness. It started rather well, with a feeling of grief and loss, and anticipation at where this story was going. But it never got there. The plot meandered from the first third onwards and whilst there is nothing inherently wrong with that an author does need to replace it with some other driver to retain a reader’s interest – characterisation for example. But here the characterisations felt increasingly weak as the story went on, rather than solidifying. For example let’s take Martin and Marjke – their story was sweet and endearing as well as being true and quite funny in places, but why were they even in the book? Can I have a book just about them, please?
Which leads me to the climactic moment of the “big reveal”. There were hidden secrets in this book but unfortunately when I got to them my interest had not been sufficiently piqued and retained to care enough.
Any other author (poor Niffenegger) and I would have said “pleasantly enjoyable, nothing amazing, but a good read”. But this is Niffenegger – I’m sorry, but I want you to be amazing! And it’s definitely a divisive book – plenty love it and plenty hate it, so I do recommend reading it, if just to make up your own mind.
Two little tremulous paws up from BookieMonster Kitteh. Do read it – and let me know how you felt about it.
