February 24, 2013

Stop whatever you are doing right now and head over to Amazon......yes, it's a book review

I am not kidding.  I have just read the MOST amazing book.

Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger.

You might recognize that name as she also wrote The Time Traveler's Wife (also an excellent book, pick it up while you are buying this one).

Verbatim from the back cover....

Julia and Valentina Poole are twenty-year old sisters with an intense attachment to each other.  One morning the mailman delivers a thick envelope to their house in the suburbs of Chicago.  Their English aunt Elspeth Noblin has died of cancer and left them her London apartment.  There are two conditions for this inheritance:  that they live in the flat for a year before they sell it and that their parents not enter it.

The girls move to Elspeth's flat, which border the vast Highgate Cemetery, where Christina Rossetti, George Eliot, Stella Gibbons, and other luminaries are buried.  Julia and Valentina becoming involved with their living neighbors: Martin, a composer of crossword puzzles who suffers from crippling OCD, and Robert, Elspeth's elusive lover, a scholar of the cemetery.  They also discover that much is still alive in Highgate, including - perhaps - their aunt.

If THAT isn't enough to pull you in - then let me tell you this; although this is a ghost story; it isn't.  I mean you are not going to find yourself knee-deep in a Stephen King-esque kind of story.

I have just spent the majority of the weekend with my head buried in this book.  Seriously.

I want so badly to spill it all out, but I know if I keep typing much longer I will.  So, I'll just say this.  This woman knows how to write.  She knows how to develop her characters and pull you in.  Once you pick up this novel you will not want to put it down until you are finished.  And then?

Then you will want to pick it up again immediately and start over...just to see what you might have missed on the first read.

I kid you not - this is a book that you need to read.  And then after you've read it, let's discuss, seriously.  Because I need to talk to someone about this book.

Now go!  I'm waiting...

8 comments:

  1. OK... how did you know I was finished with my Kindle books already? I'll download it tomorrow. :)

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  2. I read it already and really enjoyed it, too. I think I've read most of her books already and will read any others she produces. I love it when a book grabs me like that. :-)

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  3. I think I still have money left on my account. I am going to have to go buy it. :)

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  4. I would read that! I liked The Time Travelers Wife.

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  5. Sounds like something I'd like, but my to-read pile is already taking up precious real estate in my place!

    What to do, what to do...

    Pearl

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  6. Read and loved HFS last year - somehow hadn't clued into TTTW being written by the same author. Which is sad because I have it in my giant pile of things to read. Time to pull it to the top of the stack!

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  7. Ohhh I loved the Time Travelers Wife! Thanks for the recco!

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  8. I adore you. Have I told you that lately???

    And I LOVED that book!

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