Cavendish Library Blog

Her Fearful Symmetry  by Audrey Niffenegger 416p. copyright 2009

As a rule I am not a ghost story person, but I am an Audrey Niffenegger fan, so I thought I’d pick this one up and give it a try.  I’m glad I did.  It is your usual ghost story, but more of a thought provoker on the relationships between sisters in general and twins in particular.

The story concerns two twins, Julie and Valentina who inherit a flat in London from their aunt whom they had never met. They move in and find it haunted by her ghost who eventually manages to communicate with them.    While the two girls live together, they begin to piece together the story of their aunt and, her twin, their mother, and the secrets they shared. They also each form a relationship with men in their building, one of which had had a relationship with their deceased aunt; the other is a married OCD sufferer and Valentine begins to realize the unhealthiness of her relationship with her own twin and plots of a way to change it.

The story is very well written and the characters are fascinating as are the thoughts it raises on the different types of ghosts in one’s life: memories as well as those who are dead and what is a twin, but a ghost of one’s self?  I was totally sucked into the story, for once I didn’t mind being under the hairdryer at the beauty parlor, it was an engrossing read and I strongly recommend it.

Her Fearful Symmetry can be found at the Cavendish Fletcher Community Library is both book and audiobook form.  

Midnight Bayou by Nora Roberts  Copyright 2001, Jove 368 p.

I was surfing channels on my television one night not too long ago and I came across a made for TV movie based on the Nora Roberts book Midnight Bayou. As I remembered loving the book I watched the movie and was totally disgusted and decided to revisit the book to see if I had been mistaken when I read it.  After all it might have been as bad as the movie.  To my utter delight, it wasn’t.

The book has two intertwining plots.  One is the story of Declan, a lawyer from Boston who comes to New Orleans wanting a change from his life and remembering a house, Manet Hall, which he has seen years before. He restores it and falls in love with Lena.  Meanwhile he has dreams and fugue episodes about a family who lived in the hall a hundred years earlier.  As both stories unfold we find out what happened to the family and why the hall is haunted. 

This book is extremely well written.  The characters are well delineated and maybe it’s just me, but I always wanted to restore a big house.  The detail in the restoration makes me think that Nora Roberts either always wanted to or did restore something. 

Either way this book is an entertaining mix of romance, ghosts and home improvement and is perfect for beach reading or whiling away an afternoon.