To write this book, Audrey Niffenegger moved from the USA to England and took a job as a tour guide at the famous Highgate Cemetery in London.
In an interview, the writer admitted that while working on the book she practically immersed herself in the role… of a ghost, and every time she noticed her reflection in the mirror, she was surprised. “In every one of my characters there is always a part of me,” Audrey Niffenegger said. “I always somehow know what will happen, what this or that character will do.”
Elsbeth Noblin — the main heroine of the new novel “Her Fearful Symmetry” — bequeaths her London apartment to her nieces. Their mother, Edwina (the heroine’s twin sister), left for the USA with a scandal twenty years ago, and since then the sisters have not communicated. And now Julia and Valentina—also twins—move from Michigan to London into a new home located near the legendary Highgate Cemetery. Who leaves messages for them on the dusty lid of the piano, whose cold breath is felt in an empty apartment? Who lured the Cat of Death into the house?..
Audrey Niffenegger’s new novel is a long-awaited and unpredictable story about family secrets and ghosts, about a gloomy metropolis teeming with the shadows of the past, and about love over which even death has no power.