Audrey Niffenegger - Her Fearful Symmetry
Having read the Time Traveler's Wife, I was expecting a lot from this book. The characters in TTW are meaningful and believable despite the supernatural context to the story. The female character, Clare, is so strong in that book, and I'm always a fan of strong female characters, but her will to have a child and fighting spirit is also very inspiring. The book is extremely well written, the story compelling and by the end of it I was in absolute floods of tears. I refused to watch the film version for a while because I knew how upsetting it would be.
This novel, however, disappointed me. The characters were not well developed enough, but especially Elspeth and Edie. So much more time could have been spent on their childhood - in fact, and this is a rare criticism, had the book been double the length it may have been better. Perhaps Niffenegger was told by her editors to keep it to a similar length to her previous publication, but the plot and character development especially could have benefitted from a few more chapters. More time could also have been spent on the elder generation - Edie, Elspeth and Jack, than Julia and Valentina. So all in all the balance between the characters wasn't quite right for me. I found the twis both extremely irritating, maybe because neither of them embodied the strong female I was so hoping would reappear. Julia maybe could have been, but she just came across as bossy and insensitive, not a very likeable character. I guess my problem is that I read books and unless a character is identified as being bad or obnoxious, ie I'm not supposed to like them, I always want to like the characters. So when I don't it changes the reading experience for me.
That said, it was generally a good story, and I enjoyed it being set in London. It was a bit cold towards the end, although I felt a death was inevitable, but I came to dislike Elspeth more than I ever expected to by the end, simply for her selfishness. I also felt the section where the complicated exchange between Edie and Elspeth in their earlier life could have been explained better - I read it several times and still had to write it down to get my head around it. Very imaginative plotline, but the ending felt like a bit of an empty climax. I also found myself wishing that I lived in the girls' flat - what a fabulous place to live in London! One day maybe I will!
I feel like maybe Niffenegger was either caged in or slightly lazy in certain passages, because there are undoubtedly flashes of brilliance, but they are flanked by normal, occasionally mediocre writing. If you can't decide which to read, in my opinion Time Traveler's Wife is definitely better.
Also, if you're wondering why these reviews are appearing quite frequently and thinking "gosh she can't be reading all of these this quickly", I'm not! I have a few reviews stocked up from earlier this year because I've been wanting to do this for a while, so now I'm uploading my back catalogue!
