A review of Audrey Niffenegger’s Her Fearful Symmetry in 100 words.
Haunting. That’s the best word for it. Her Fearful Symmetry shows what closeness can do, and how much love impacts the people it touches. Closeness is portrayed as a curse, as something that one needs to be released from. All the characters are tortured by it, and none of them are really ever released. Love, from mothers to daughters, from husbands to wives, from sisters to sisters, is repeated over and over again throughout the novel in various pairs and different generations. The symmetry in the title is a exactly this: closeness and love. Closeness is love; love is closeness.