Her Fearful Symmetry

Her Fearful Symmetry, by Audrey Niffenegger
Adult, 2009

From Publishers Weekly:
When Elspeth Noblin dies, she leaves everything to the 20-year-old American twin daughters of her own long-estranged twin, Edie. Valentina and Julia, as enmeshed as Elspeth and Edie once were, move into Elspeth's London flat bordering Highgate Cemetery in a building occupied by Elspeth's lover, Robert, and the novel's most interesting character, Martin, whose wife is long suffering due to his crushing and beautifully portrayed OCD. The girls are pallid and incurious; they wander around London and spend time with Robert and Martin and Elspeth's ghost. Valentina's developing relationship with Robert arouses mild jealousy, and when Valentina pursues her interest in fashion design, Julia disapproves, which leads Valentina and Elspeth to concoct an extreme plan to allow Valentina to lead her own life.

Trackgeek: This is absolutely an adult novel. While there really wasn't any bad swearing in it, and no sex scenes, the whole subject matter and the twist at the end of the book is rather disturbing. The highlight of the whole novel really is the side plot of the OCD neighbor who overcomes his phobias and goes to find his wife in Amsterdam, which is a very sweet story line. Over all I do not recommend this book- it is just disturbing on a level of selfishness that makes me not want to read anything by the author again. The only reason that I finished it was I was already most of the way through and needed to figure out what happened.
Grade C-.