This is a big year for Audrey Niffenegger. Scribner bought the rights to her second novel, “Her Fearful Symmetry,” for a reported $4.8 million — a huge vote of confidence in her ability to bring the book out from the shadow of her first novel, “The Time Traveler’s Wife.”
At first, “Her Fearful Symmetry” seems to succeed. Niffenegger portrays romantic love without crossing into either triteness or cynicism; in a short prologue, a man discovers that his beloved, Elspeth Noblin, has succumbed to cancer while he was getting tea from the hospital drink machine. He puts the tea aside and lies next to her. The scene is poignant, simple and says all that can be said about grief.
Read more. (From The Oregonian, September 27, 2009.)
Tags: Book reviews
