Her Fearful Symmetry

Having explored the Sci-fi time travel genre this past February and March, one of my top five favorites was Audrey Niffenegger's debut novel, The Time Traveler's Wife  . So it was only natural that, upon my going off in a different direction, Niffenegger's second novel, Her Fearful Symmetry would make the reading list this month.

Just as Octavia Butler had done with fledgling , Niffenegger broke from the time travel genre - Butler writing a vampire novel and Niffenegger writing a ghost story.

Without going too far into the plot, I'll hit some of the high points. Julia and Valentina are 20 year old identical twins - the daughters and nieces of estranged identical twins, Elspeth and Edwina. Early in the novel, Elspeth dies of leukemia and leaves her nieces her flat, located beside Highgate cemetery in London, and slightly more than £2,000,000 with the stipulation that they move from the U.S. to London and live in the flat for one year. The young girls' parents are forbidden to enter the flat.

Niffenegger is a very talented and creative writer, but unfortunately the majority of her work is in the form of so-called "novels in pictures" (visual books) which aren't going to work on a Kindle. According to what I've read online, Niffenegger is currently working on two novels - one is a sequel to The Time Traveler's Wife which was supposed to be ready by 2018 - that's four years ago and we're still waiting. The other novel in progress is The Chinchilla Girl in Exile. No word on it either.