Editors Reads Verdict
A gothic romance that is not quite The Time Traveler's Wife but is entirely its own thing — Highgate Cemetery is rendered with extraordinary specificity, and the ghost story has genuine formal originality.
What We Loved
- Highgate Cemetery is one of the most fully realised settings in recent literary fiction — clearly researched with obsessive care
- The ghost story mechanics are handled with formal originality
- The twins' relationship is psychological precise in ways that the supernatural elements reinforce rather than distract from
Minor Drawbacks
- The final act requires a suspension of disbelief that some readers find exceeds the novel's earned credit
- Less emotionally overwhelming than The Time Traveler's Wife — the stakes feel somewhat lower
Key Takeaways
- → Love that continues past death is not a comforting idea — it is a terrifying one
- → Twins share a bond that is not simply closeness but a specific doubling of identity that can be used against them
- → The dead do not haunt places randomly — they haunt what they could not resolve
| Author | Audrey Niffenegger |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Scribner |
| Pages | 406 |
| Published | September 29, 2009 |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Literary Fiction, Gothic, Romance |
| Difficulty | Beginner |
| Best For | Readers of The Time Traveler's Wife ready for Niffenegger's stranger, darker second novel. |
The Inheritance
Julia and Valentina Poole are American twins who have never left their parents’ house. Their great-aunt Elspeth Noblin, whom they never met, dies and leaves them her flat — the condition being that they live there for a year and that their mother, Elspeth’s twin sister, may not visit. The flat overlooks Highgate Cemetery.
Elspeth is, it quickly becomes clear, still present. What she wants from the twins — and from Robert, her former lover who lives downstairs, consumed by grief — forms the novel’s increasingly strange plot.
London as Gothic Stage
Niffenegger spent considerable time researching Highgate Cemetery and its history (it opened in 1839, fell into neglect, was rescued by a conservation organisation in the 1970s), and the research shows: the cemetery is rendered with the kind of specific detail that makes a place feel like a character. The novel is built around the premise that certain places accumulate significance, that the dead leave something in the spaces they inhabited, and that this something is not metaphor but has actual causal properties in the world.
The ghost story is formally more inventive than most — Niffenegger is not interested in haunting as horror but in haunting as a form of unfinished business with the living.
Our rating: 3.8/5 — Niffenegger’s stranger and darker second novel: less heartbreaking than its predecessor, more formally original, entirely worth reading.
Reading Guides
Frequently Asked Questions
What is "Her Fearful Symmetry" about?
American twins inherit a flat overlooking Highgate Cemetery in London from an aunt they never met — and find themselves entangled with a ghost, the aunt's former lover, and a mystery about the family's past.
Who should read "Her Fearful Symmetry"?
Readers of The Time Traveler's Wife ready for Niffenegger's stranger, darker second novel.
What are the key takeaways from "Her Fearful Symmetry"?
Love that continues past death is not a comforting idea — it is a terrifying one Twins share a bond that is not simply closeness but a specific doubling of identity that can be used against them The dead do not haunt places randomly — they haunt what they could not resolve
Is "Her Fearful Symmetry" worth reading?
A gothic romance that is not quite The Time Traveler's Wife but is entirely its own thing — Highgate Cemetery is rendered with extraordinary specificity, and the ghost story has genuine formal originality.
Ready to Read Her Fearful Symmetry?
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