Review: Her Fearful Symmetry, by Audrey Niffenegger

As a huge fan of The Time Traveller's Wife, I have been waiting with bated breath for Audrey Niffenegger's second novel, Her Fearful Symmetry. I particularly was looking forward to another carefully crafted literary maze; TTW was a beautiful catacomb of human relationships. I put my name on the waiting list at the local library as soon as I knew the release date, and was the first to receive a copy.

I'm not going to drag this out: I am disappointed. I think part of the problem is that Niffenegger set the bar very high with her first book, and having such an achievement as a first novel is difficult to match with the second.

In Symmetry, Niffenegger again creates a reality where the division of various realms is more of a porous membrane rather than a wall. The novel opens with the sad, early death of Elspeth, a forty-something year old woman, from leukemia. She leaves her husband, Robert, who works at a historic cemetary near their home, all of her personal effects, but wills the twenty year-old twin daughters of her own estranged twin sister the deed to the flat downstairs, given that they live in it for a year before selling it. The twins arrive a year later, carrying a great deal of baggage both inside and out, to a seemingly empty apartment, but of course, it is not empty; Elspeth is still there, unable to leave, but growing stronger by the day. As her ability to communicate with the living increases, so intensifies the strange relationship brewing between the girls, Robert, and Elspeth until a horrific turn of events forces each to reconcile their own desires with what it means to be human.

I can boil my disappointment down to a few points. First, I knew exactly what the Big Secret was within a few chapters. Second, the relationship between the girls as well as that between the two of them and Robert had an almost V.C. Andrews feel to it which I found mildly disgusting. Third, it was just typical and predictable. By the time The Secret comes out, the ending is inevitable. If I hadn't known she was capable of more, I might have been satisfied despite these things, but I do, and she is, and I'm not. I especially felt that the ending could have been better.

WARNING ** PLOT GIVEAWAY ** SKIP TO BELOW IF YOU HAVEN'T READ IT YET!
After everything that had happened, Robert left Elspeth/Edie with the baby?! After she'd already abandoned her own babies, allowed one to kill herself, and then not helped her come back to life, she used her reanimated daughter's body to have a baby with her husband, and he left it with her when he took off? Yuck.

OK, YOU CAN COME BACK NOW************

Hopefully, Niffenegger's third novel will return to a more positive, expansive plot rather than a rehashing of family-ghost-with-a-secret tales. Her writing style is still lovely, but the material was lacking in this one.

Rating: two out of five stars: Creepy, and not in a good way.

Review: All the Living, by C.E. Morgan

All The Living, novelist C. E. Morgan's first offering, presents a familiar story - that of coming of age - in an unfamiliar way. Aloma, who was orphaned as a child, is working at the Kentucky school she attended when she meets Orren, whose family has recently been killed in an auto accident. The two are instantly drawn to each other on a very primal level, both mentally and physically, as their shared pain and loneliness are assuaged by youthful lust. When Orren asks Aloma to move with him to the small-town farm he has inherited, she accepts, imagining a settled, routine life she has experienced only in her mind.

Once Aloma arrives at the farm, however, it is to live in a run-down shack on the property with no running water, because Orren cannot bear to live in the larger, modern home a few acres away where his family had lived. As lust diffuses into daily life, the two must face their reality: Orren with his deep-seated grief and insecurity, Aloma with the emptiness she had expected Orren to fill. When Orren does not, as her domestic fantasy had led her to expect, ask her to marry him, her fantasy evolves into seething petulance. Disenchanted, she applies to play the organ at a local church as a way to escape the farm, and meets a young pastor, who is himself searching for something. From there, Aloma must decide what her life will be, and where she will decide to go.

Although it may sound like one, this is not a romance novel. Rather, it is an investigation of how the human soul copes with difficulty, and the unanticipated repercussions of choices we make, especially the naiive choices of the young. One of the best qualities of this book is its tone, which is very true to its Kentucky farm roots, with the spare speech and practicality of the midwest giving an honest portrayal of two humans grasping at their surroundings to forge together some kind of concrete basis for existance.

All the Living is not exciting, or mysterious. It is quiet, sneaking up on the reader, who all of a sudden realizes that she is actually interested in these two people, and is not just tagging along. Its very quietness is what enables it to slip into the brain unnoticed, nestling down and nagging at you to follow Aloma as she decides which parts of herself to hold onto, and which to wash away. Some sections are more engrossing than others, and none of the characters are perfectly endearing, but that's what makes the book real. The ending is very well-written, and I didn't realize that it was what I had been hoping for all along until it actually happened.

Review: 3 1/2 out of 5 stars: Well-crafted, slightly subdued, honest