SPOILER ALERT: Her Fearful Symmetry

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Looks like a few of us are reading the same books. Following the sock puppet's suggestion, I have created a thread with spoiler alert where we can discuss them. This the first; hopefully there will be more.

Second-novel syndrome is well documented (like second album syndrome). You have your whole life to produce the first novel, but not everyone has a second in them. (Case in point: John Kennedy Toole). One way of dealing with that is to just write the same novel over and over again, peopled with different characters (hello, Wilbur Smith).

I'd suspect that having your first novel cause an international sensation and be turned into a major Hollywood film might prove a likely precursor to second novel syndrome.

Audrey Niffenegger seems to have taken conscious steps to avoid that. She had little to do with the film of The Time Traveller's Wife, and has apparently never seen it. She changed genre and locale, and she took her own sweet time writing Her Fearful Symmetry, rather than accede to the inevitable pressure for a quick follow-up to TTTW.

I liked the choice of setting. Highgate cemetery and its surrounds evoked a nice Gothic feel to the ghost story she tells. She spruiks it a little too much in some touristy writing rather than letting it speak for itself, but that doesn't detract too much from the book.

I think the book suffered from a surfeit of characters. Marijke is given short shrift and doesn't really add much. Martin, the upstairs neighbour with OCD, also adds little to the plot. The two of them seem to belong in a completely different book, and their travails lend an air of cliched realism that interferes with what should be a fairly creepy ghost story.

The sibling relationship between Julia and Valentina is nicely captured and very believable. The complexities of their relationship are all a function of their status as twins. OTOH the fractured relationship between Elspeth and Edie, which Niffenegger tries to use as a kind of generational pre-cursor, is really no more than a mundane spat between rivals; twinhood is not much of an issue, and Niffenegger misses an opportunity there.

Elspeth's return as a ghost is well-handled and convincingly told. I liked her gradual discovery of her spiritualistic capabilities. What's less well-handled is the plot. The fact that the girls are Elspeth's daughters is screamingly obvious from the minute the terms of the will are made known. Valentina's and Julia's attraction towards dysfunctional older men is also jarringly unreal, particularly Julia, who is portrayed as a much more modern girl than her sister. Finally, Elspeth's evil intentions towards Valentina are telegraphed way in advance; pretty much immediately from the time that she kills the cat.

It's good that Niffenegger resisted temptation and tried something different. It's not good that she failed to deliver a book anywhere near as good as her first.

[Georgina]

I have quite a bit to say about this. I'll be back.

Quick test. I wrote text in white below. I wonder if maybe we ought to write spoilers like this so people could read basic book information discussion and only read spoiler information if they do it deliberately.


I wonder if we should write spoilers like this?

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By blocking your post I can read the white text, but it's not easy for me.

If you look at my post, there are a few different plot points revealed and I would have to edit what I wrote to hide the different bits. Plus it is a subjective thing as to what constitutes a spoiler.

I find it more convenient to simply label the whole post with a spoiler warning, like a NSFW warning. Caveat emptor.

Let me know what you think.

[Georgina]

Yes, I think you're right. It's not as if we're out of space here. If someone would like to have a non-spoiler discussion, they're free to start one. So yes, "spoiler" warning in the thread title ought to suffice.

And, my apologies, I came back here to write about this last night and got sidetracked with political books in the news section.

Just as an aside, because I've read a couple of different ideas about what happened to Robert at the end of the book, what do you think became of him?

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Dec 14, 2009 9:45:21 GMT -5 Georgina said:

Just as an aside, because I've read a couple of different ideas about what happened to Robert at the end of the book, what do you think became of him?

At one point he told Elspeth "I will never forgive you". I think he stuck around long enough to both give her what she really wanted (a baby) and to bring his own baby (his dissertation) into the world. Then, true to his word, he walked out on her.

I don't think there's much in the book to give an idea of what might have happened to him. He was persona non grata at Highgate, and I think the place would have been too painful for him to return. Writing his dissertation would be his way of getting all that out of his system. He would have been looking for a fresh start somewhere else, but I couldn't really speculate what or where.

What have you been hearing on this point?

[Georgina]

See, I came away with the same impression as you -- although I didn't think he was persona non grata at Highgate, (although I could not figure out what he was trying to accomplish by involving Jessica in what was going on) and completing the manuscript and leaving struck me as one of the final pieces of thread in the deeply woven theme of finding freedom. All characters in the book were trying to find freedom from either circumstance imposed upon them or one of their own making. I got the idea that the book was less about plot and even character and more about themes. (More about that later.)

However, I read one person postulate something about "given the history of Robert's father" (which of the life of me I couldn't recall -- I have to make time to go back and scour the book and find out what that means) that Robert likely killed himself. I'd wondered if you'd come away with that too.

Anyway, again, I'm pressed for time and really want to talk about this. I'll be back.

[Georgina]

I enjoyed this book. It took a bit of time for it to catch fire with me, but once it did, it really clicked. Someone on another book site coined the term Niffeneger-esque and that's apt. I can't quite pin it down, but her characters and writing assumed that same sort of intangible flavour that were in The Time Traveller's Wife without the book being anything like. Yes, following up to writing something that became such a sensation would be a hugely daunting task. I didn't get the impression, though, that Niffeneger was trying to follow up. I got the feeling she was just writing the next story she wanted to tell.

(And yes, I adored The Time Traveller's Wife and this didn't come close to making me feel as passionately about a book. It doesn't rate high in my favourites, but it wasn't the disaster I'd anticipated from a second book following the first monster she wrote.)

Symmetry, as I commented in my previous post, truly wasn't plot driven. There isn't a whole lot of plot line to follow. And the characters, while interwoven, and Elspeth being interesting and all, still weren't the driving force behind the book. The theme was. And the theme was personal freedom and at what cost.

Everyone in the book was a prisoner either of their own making or of circumstance. Everyone managed to break out one way or the other. Martin and Elspeth were both trapped in the house. Valentia and Marjike are trapped by other people. Julia and Edie have trapped themselves. Robert and (now I can't recall Edie's husband's name -- I should go get the book) Jack are trapped in their relationships to the first set of twins. And each set of twins is trapped within their twinship. Everyone finds a way out. Whether or not those ways were best is up to the reader, I suppose, to apply ethics to.

Elspeth, however, was clearly not a nice person. Robert even said so of her while she was alive. I knew bad things would ensue when she insisted on telling Robert that Valentina would kill herself if Elspeth didn't go along with her plot. Valentina didn't ever say any such thing. So. We saw that coming.

But for all of the betrayal, Valentina wound up with what she wanted. Freedom and happiness. Her situations begs the old adage, be careful what you wish for. She got what she so desperately longed for even if it didn't take the shape she anticipated. Although I'd really like to know how she suddenly divined how to leave the house.

Again, more later.

[MacBeth]

Interesting to see a character with my given name....have not used it since I was a little one - everyone got it wrong.

[Georgina]

Your name is actually Elspeth, Beth? Nifty. That's such a pretty name. I can see a lot of people getting it wrong and that being really frustrating after a while. I have a friend named Ina who gave up on that name and now goes by her middle name, because she got sick of having to repeat her name several times when introducing herself to new people and having to say, "Ina. Like China without the 'ch'."

I missed overlapping ways in which people were trapped. Robert was trapped a couple ways, one in his grief for his loss of Elspeth, then trapped in the fact of her ghost in the house, but mostly trapped with his thesis paper that continued on endlessly. What became of him when he freed himself of all of that is up for speculation right now.

Edie and Jack got free with the truth. It cost them dearly to arrive at it, though. Martin and Robert each got freed as a result of one of the twins. I didn't think that the addition of Martin and Marjike was quite as off as other people tended to see. Martin was freed by Julia and her vitamin ploy and Robert was freed by Valentina and her ploy with Elspeth. Marjike made freedom appear as easy as walking out the door, but in fact, it wasn't all that easy and she wasn't entirely free with just that act.

At any rate. I found the young twins a bit twee most of the time and too young for their age. I enjoyed the other characters quite a bit and found the contrast with Elspeth's seeming kindness and actual ruthlessness difficult to reconcile, at times. She didn't seem monstrous or evil in a classic sense that her actions were overtly and consistently mean or vicious. It was easy to believe her motives were pure except that her words betrayed her.

The proximity of Highgate Cemetery gave a nice Gothic feel to the book. The description of the tour has made me truly want to go and visit it. The impact of in-town cemeteries in earlier centuries hadn't even occurred to me, and while that was just one tiny bit of detail, I enjoyed learning it.

Now I'll shut up about this...for a while, anyway.

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Dec 15, 2009 9:54:44 GMT -5 Georgina said:

However, I read one person postulate something about "given the history of Robert's father" (which of the life of me I couldn't recall -- I have to make time to go back and scour the book and find out what that means) that Robert likely killed himself. I'd wondered if you'd come away with that too.

I definitely didn't come away with that idea. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Why would he finish his dissertation first?

Maybe the book is theme-driven as you say, but I still felt it was very disjointed and the plot twists were telegraphed waaaay in advance. An inferior effort to her first novel, for sure.

Marijke and Martin were an interesting couple whose story would make a good subject for a different book. But their modern problems jarred in what was otherwise a Gothic ghost story. Like reading about a guy with AIDS in Dickens.

And I just don't buy the twins falling in love with a couple of derelicts like Robert and Martin. I'm sorry, but that was just too much on the incredulity scale.

[Georgina]

Finishing his dissertation, first, made sense to me with the idea of achieving one aspect of freedom for himself. As I said, I didn't get the impression that Robert had done himself in either, and I have to go back and see if I can find the reference about his father to see if I can even make that idea make any sense at all. In the absence of that, where do you suppose he went?

I don't buy the twins falling for Robert and Martin either. And yes, the plot twists were telegraphed.

And yes, it's certainly not the book her first was. However, I very deliberately set her first book aside in my mind and treated this one as a singular effort. I let it stand on its own and didn't mentally compare the two while reading in order to give it a chance. I think that part of the huge appeal of The Time Traveller's Wife was the new spin put on the idea of time travel itself and, unless she repeated something like that, it's an unfair comparison. Niffeneger, in this new book, introduces a new way to interpret ghosts and their behaviour, so there's a similarity of thought there.

I've wandered off too many times, and now I've lost my train of thought entirely.

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Dec 17, 2009 9:56:51 GMT -5 Georgina said:

where do you suppose he went?

I don't recall any clues as to where he might have gone, just that he left (as opposed to killing himself). I think it's over-interpreting to strain for meanings if Niffenegger hasn't given the reader anything to go by.

I think that part of the huge appeal of The Time Traveller's Wife was the new spin put on the idea of time travel itself

I agree

a new way to interpret ghosts and their behaviour, so there's a similarity of thought there.

I haven't read a huge amount of modern ghost stories, but I'd be surprised if there was anything hugely original in this.