"Her Fearful Simmetry" by Audrey Niffenegger
"Her Fearful Simmetry" by Audrey Niffenegger
First read: 17.10.2009
Comments: The Time traveler's wife set really high expectations for Niffenegger's second novel. Then when the topic at hand: twins, turned out to be much to my taste it seemed like i had won a literary lottery of some kind. Turns out I handn't, the novel, although not bad, it's not any good either. It builds up a lot to a rather relevant mystery but then the mystery's consequences, the way it transforms what the characters' believed to be their lives, are passed over. Plus, often character motivations were unclear, as if they author needed them to do something and decided that stretching their personalities to make them to do it was believable since she dealing with ghosts already. Irrefutable proof of this for me is the way I couldn't keep reading for long, constantly getting distracted by what seemed huge leaps in the characters progression without any signs of the past of time. In TTTW the story was a series of anecdotes that make you feel you knew the characters, here the disconnected passages of their daily lives make you feel like an outsider who can't quite grasp how their intimacy has been built since it's rarely explicitly shown (not so much in the case of Martin and Julia) but a lot with Valentina and Robert, who become romantically attached through dinners that are never described and outings of little relevance even though the narrative is not concretely focalized through Julia or Elspeth.
*Spoilers*
Julia's reaction to the end of the story doesn't make sense, nor does Valentina's (Why doesn't she ask Robert to try and fix the exchange? Why doesn't Elspeth even has any, i dunno, doubts about wearing her own daughter's body and leaving that daughter trapped in a flat with the one person she desperately wishes to escape? Why is Julia willing to let the ghost (who has no future) go when she refused to let the person who had? Why is it that only when Valentina can't have a life of her own anymore that she decides *she* wants one and starts talking to other people?
Finally, why none of the characters's reactions make any sense?
I really enjoyed the stories about the cemetery, though, it was a nice tour, a pity the people who were present in the story were not as interesting.
2009, 2009: novel in english, book-2009, novel, *author: female, @read in english, -twins, -family, -fantasy, -audiobook, 2009: 4rd
First read: 17.10.2009
Comments: The Time traveler's wife set really high expectations for Niffenegger's second novel. Then when the topic at hand: twins, turned out to be much to my taste it seemed like i had won a literary lottery of some kind. Turns out I handn't, the novel, although not bad, it's not any good either. It builds up a lot to a rather relevant mystery but then the mystery's consequences, the way it transforms what the characters' believed to be their lives, are passed over. Plus, often character motivations were unclear, as if they author needed them to do something and decided that stretching their personalities to make them to do it was believable since she dealing with ghosts already. Irrefutable proof of this for me is the way I couldn't keep reading for long, constantly getting distracted by what seemed huge leaps in the characters progression without any signs of the past of time. In TTTW the story was a series of anecdotes that make you feel you knew the characters, here the disconnected passages of their daily lives make you feel like an outsider who can't quite grasp how their intimacy has been built since it's rarely explicitly shown (not so much in the case of Martin and Julia) but a lot with Valentina and Robert, who become romantically attached through dinners that are never described and outings of little relevance even though the narrative is not concretely focalized through Julia or Elspeth.
*Spoilers*
Julia's reaction to the end of the story doesn't make sense, nor does Valentina's (Why doesn't she ask Robert to try and fix the exchange? Why doesn't Elspeth even has any, i dunno, doubts about wearing her own daughter's body and leaving that daughter trapped in a flat with the one person she desperately wishes to escape? Why is Julia willing to let the ghost (who has no future) go when she refused to let the person who had? Why is it that only when Valentina can't have a life of her own anymore that she decides *she* wants one and starts talking to other people?
Finally, why none of the characters's reactions make any sense?
I really enjoyed the stories about the cemetery, though, it was a nice tour, a pity the people who were present in the story were not as interesting.
2009, 2009: novel in english, book-2009, novel, *author: female, @read in english, -twins, -family, -fantasy, -audiobook, 2009: 4rd