Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

Her Fearful Symmetry
By Audrey Niffenegger

Elspeth has been sending letters to Edie, her twin, in America every two weeks.  Edie has a mailbox where she receives the letters and then reads and burns them.  Finally, a letter arrives which says good-bye.  Elspeth is dying of cancer.

“Elspeth turned her face towards the door.  She wanted to call out, Robert, but her throat was suddenly full.  She felt as though her soul were attempting to climb out by way of her oesophagus.”

Edie is raising two daughters, Valentina and Julia, twins themselves.  In her will, Elspeth leaves the twins her flat but the bequest comes with strings.  Their parents cannot visit the flat, and the girls must live there for a year before selling.

The other people in the building next to Highgate Cemetery are dealing with changes as well.  Elspeth’s lover, Robert, lives in one of the flats.  He has never had to deal with losing someone. 

The other tenant, Martin, has an obsessive compulsive disorder and is agoraphobic.  His wife of 23 years, Marijke, has just left him to go back to her native land.  She would welcome him coming too but doesn’t expect he ever will.  He is too bound by his own mind.

“Check the gas.  Wash my hands.  Wash them very thoroughly, so there can be no mistake.  Use stronger soap.  Use bleach.  The floor is dirty.  Wash it.  Walk around the dirty part without touching it.  Use as few steps as possible. Spread towels over the floor to keep the contamination from spreading.  Wash the towels.  Again.  Again.”

As the twins arrive from America, Robert and Martin are getting through the days, dealing with their respective losses, but Elspeth has not completely left.  In fact, she is getting stronger.

The writing is pensive, elegant, involved.  Even a simple description of Marijke’s apartment is rife with meaning and emotion even as it gambols. 

“It had pitched ceilings, heavy beams, whitewashed walls.  Her futon occupied one corner; her clothes hung in another corner behind a curtain.  She had a table with two chairs, a tiny kitchen, a window that overlooked the little crooked street, a vase of freesias on the windowsill.  She had a comfortable chair and a lamp.  For more than a year now this room had been her haven, fortress, retreat, her triumphant, undiscoverable gambit in her marital game of hide-and-seek.  Standing there, clasping the earrings in her hand, Marijke saw her snug room as a lonely place.  Apartment.  A place to be apart.  She shook her head to change her thoughts and opened Martin’s letter.”

It is an unusual novel with some very lovely writing and some truly horrific incidents.  I was intrigued, transported and entertained.  I would recommend it.