Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
Reading guide
About the Book
Julia and Valentina Poole are normal American teenagers – normal, at least, for identical
‘mirror’ twins who have no interest in college or jobs or possibly anything outside their cosy suburban home. But everything changes when they receive notice that an aunt whom they didn’t know existed has died and left them her flat in an apartment block overlooking Highgate
Cemetery in London. They feel that at last their own lives can begin ... but have no idea that they’ve been summoned into a tangle of fraying lives, from the obsessive-compulsive crossword setter who lives above them to their aunt’s mysterious and elusive lover who lives below them, and even to their aunt herself, who never got over her estrangement from the twins’ mother – and who can’t seem to quite leave her flat....
With Highgate Cemetery itself a character and echoes of Henry James and Charles Dickens,
Her Fearful Symmetry is a delicious and deadly twenty-first-century ghost story about
Niffenegger’s familiar themes of love, loss and identity.
Reviews for The Time Traveler’s Wife
‘The Time Traveler’s Wife is one of those books where you read the first paragraph and you’re hooked – unmissable’ Irish Independent
‘Henry’s journeys back and forth are by turns slapstick noir and unbearably poignant, and
Clare’s child and teen narrations disturbingly pitch-perfect. Philosophical speculation occurs in the most unlikely devices and morality, despite the temptations of plot, remains intact. This is alarmingly close to perfection, and balm to the jaded’ Scotland on Sunday
'The central story is so strong and touching – a universal story – ingenious – a rare book’
Evening Standard
‘Wonky, sexy, incredible’ The Times
About the Author
Audrey Niffenegger is a writer and visual artist who has achieved great success in both worlds. Her debut novel, The Time Traveler’s Wife, has sold nearly five million copies worldwide and has been translated into thirty-three languages to date. A Richard & Judy book club choice in the UK, it has been a huge bestseller all round the world. In the Daily
Telegraph’s readers’ poll of the ‘Top 50 Books of All Time’ it appeared at no. 11. Niffenegger is also the author of two ‘novels-in-pictures’, The Three Incestuous Sisters (2005) and The
Adventuress (2006), both published by Cape. Her graphic novel The Night Bookmobile was recently serialized in the Guardian and will be published soon on the Cape Graphic list.
A Chicago native, Niffenegger received her MFA in Printmaking and Drawing from
Northwestern University. Her art has been widely exhibited in the United States and is in the permanent collections of the Library of Congress and Harvard University’s Houghton Library.
Interview:

What was the inspiration for Her Fearful Symmetry?
The original idea had to do with a man who can’t leave his apartment and a girl who visits him. As I walked around this imaginary apartment inside my head, I saw lots of boxes and when I looked out the window I saw a cemetery. At the beginning this apartment was in
Chicago and the cemetery was Graceland, but then I asked myself, “What’s my favourite

cemetery?” and the answer was Highgate. So suddenly the book migrated to London.
Why did you decide to include twins in the story? And what was the significance of making Julia and Valentina 'mirror' twins?
I think the twins got in there because at the time I was dating Christopher Schneberger, a photographer who was working on a series about twins. And in Wilkie Collins’ book The
Woman in White, which was one of the models I was working from, there are two women who are strangely alike and this drives the plot of that book. I think that twins are rather eerie, and mirror twinning reinforces that effect.
The novel has a linear timeline compared to that of The Time Traveler's Wife. Did this make it easier to write? Or did it throw up different challenges?
The linear approach was more challenging, because it is harder to control the flow of information to the reader and the suspense. I substituted point of view changes for time shifts.
So sometimes the reader knows more than any one character, and sometimes the reader is left to piece the clues together.
The romantic relationships in Her Fearful Symmetry are very different from Henry and
Clare’s love story in The Time Traveler’s Wife. How important are love and romance in
Her Fearful Symmetry?
The interwoven stories of all the couples in Her Fearful Symmetry show a wide variety of relationships. Some are coming undone, some are very solid and steady, some will have happy endings and some won’t. Although the supernatural elements of the book might make it seem fantastical, it is actually meant to be a study of how love holds up under duress.
The relationships between the residents of the block of flats are important to all their lives. What came first the characters or the location?
The first characters were Martin and Julia. Then Martin had a flat, and the flat had a cemetery. The cemetery became Highgate. Then Julia acquired a twin, and Robert became a cemetery guide who lived downstairs. There was no ghost until later in the game, when the twins suddenly needed an aunt to die and leave them their flat.
One of the themes of the books seems to be about gaining freedom despite personal relationships or physical surrounding. Were you aware of this when you were writing the book?
Yes, that has been a great motif of my own life. I always seem to choose for freedom, but I wanted a kaleidoscope of characters who would each make their own choices, with various consequences. Highgate cemetery is central to the story. Why did you decide to set the story around this famous cemetery? And how much research did you have to do?
I first saw Highgate Cemetery in 1996, when I came and took the tour. It is such a magnificent place, enclosed, full of stories, a secret garden with graves. As soon as I thought of it I wanted very much to set the story there. I had no idea what that would entail, but I knew I would love learning about it. I spent a year reading everything I could find about
Highgate Cemetery and taking the tour repeatedly. Eventually Jean Pateman asked me if I would be a guide, and I very gladly began to give tours myself. I am grateful for the help of

the Friends of Highgate Cemetery because a great deal of their knowledge is impossible to find in books.
Elspeth, the twin’s aunt, is trapped in her flat as a ghost. Where did the idea of having a ghost as a character originate?
I needed someone to bring the twins to London and give them their flat. The obvious solution was a rich and expendable relation, so I gave them Aunt Elspeth. But the more I thought about Elspeth the more I liked her and I began to wish she was in the book. So she became a ghost. There is a great twist at the end of the novel. When you started writing did you know how the story was going to end?
No, it took me several years of mental groping before I realised what ought to happen. I started writing in the middle of the book and worked my way to the beginning and ending.
Who was your favourite character to write about? Or did it change as the novel progressed? Oh, I am partial to whoever I am writing about that day.
What are your favourite books? And which writers inspire you?
This book was loosely modeled on The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins and The Turn of the Screw and Portrait of a Lady, both by Henry James. The original project I assigned myself was to write a nineteenth-century novel set in the twenty-first century.
I admire Donna Tartt, Richard Powers, W.G. Sebald, Chris Adrian, Susanna Clarke, Dorothy
L. Sayers, Nicholson Baker, Margaret Atwood, A.S. Byatt, Tracy Chevalier, Virginia Woolf.
Favourite books include the trilogy His Dark Materials, by Philip Pullman; the Alice books by
Lewis Carroll; the Oz books by Frank Baum; Was by Geoff Ryman and Geek Love by
Katherine Dunn.
Points for discussion:
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‘‘Like, but unlike. Elspeth saw in Julia and Valentina the strangeness, the oneness that had always so discomfited people in herself and Edie’. Does the novel present twinship as a blessing or a curse?
Can you understand Edie and Elspeth’s motivations for the deception they undertake to bring the twins into the world? Why do you think Jack chose not to reveal that he knew what was going on?
‘Julia looked at Theo and saw Martin. This excited her.’ How does the theme of genetic resemblance raise questions about identity in the book?
Valentina and Elspeth seek to redefine the boundaries of life and death through their
‘experiment’, just like Victor Frankenstein or Romeo and Juliet. Why are we so fascinated by this concept?
How does Audrey Niffenegger explore the theme of entrapment?
‘I’m so happy,’ she thought with surprise. Do you think Valentina will be happier in death than she was in life?
The title – ‘Her Fearful Symmetry’ – contains a reference to William Blake’s poem
‘Tyger Tyger’: ‘Tyger! Tyger! burning bright/ In the forests of the night/ What immortal hand or eye/ Could frame thy fearful symmetry?’

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And at Valentina’s funeral Julia tells us that Valentina as a child had wished to come back as a tiger if she died. In what other ways is this quotation apt in describing
Valentina?
William Blake believed the body was not separate from the soul but a visible manifestation of it. How does Audrey Niffenegger explore this idea of the body as a vehicle for the soul?
In what ways is Highgate Cemetery itself a character in the novel?
At the close of the book, we are told that Elspeth ‘understood that he would not return at all’. What do you think Robert’s future holds?
Audrey Niffenegger presents several characters driven to escape controlling relationships. Discuss why these relationships are so suffocating and how they compare to other relationships in the novel.
In The Time Traveler’s Wife Audrey asks you to believe in time travel and here it is ghosts. How does the supernatural change how you read the novel? How would these stories be different without these elements?

Bibliography
The Time Traveler’s Wife (2003)
The Three Incestuous Sisters (2005)
The Adventuress (2006)
Suggested Further Reading
Frankenstein Mary Shelley
The Complete Poems William Blake
Asylum Patrick McGrath
The Séance John Harwood
A Good and Happy Child Justin Evans
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
Additional Online Resources http://www.audreyniffenegger.com/ Friends of Highgate Cemetery: http://www.highgatecemetery.org/index.asp?history.asp~mainframe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blake