Her Fearful Symmetryby Audrey Niffenegger

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 cozy suburban home. But everything changes when they receive notice that an aunt whom they didn’t know existed has died and left them her amazing flat in a building by Highgate Cemetery in London. They feel that at last their own lives can begin … but they have no idea that they’ve been summoned into a tangle of fraying lives, from the OCD-suffering 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 mother of the girls — her own twin — and who can’t even seem to quite leave her flat…. (goodreads.com)

Ok, wow, it's been almost exactly TWO YEARS between when I bought this book (in hard cover of all things!) and when I read it. (And as a side note: of the books mentioned in that post, I STILL have to read Dreaming Anastasia. Maybe I should make myself read that this month just to get them all out of the way!) (Another side note: Hmmm, I used to have a lot more comments on on my posts 2 years ago, however I have more page views now. Just something I happened to notice, I honestly don't pay attention to that very much.)What did I think of Her Fearful Symmetry? To be honest, I don't actually know. I don't think I liked it much if I want to be honest. The why of that reaction is what is stumping me.The  book wasn't really boring, it was curious enough to keep me reading. I had no idea how this story was going to unfold. There were many interesting characters (I really liked Martin) and they were all somehow intertwined. The book felt like it was shot in low-light. Like some movie that doesn't let you see the picture in front of you all that clearly. That's how I felt. I felt like everything in this book was subdued. There were too many shadows and I couldn't turn the screen brightness up enough to get a clear picture of the events.Julia and Valentia were... odd. I liked Valentina a lot and I really, truly wish that her story ended a lot better than it did. I wanted her to get stronger and stand up to Julia (whom I didn't like at all).I wanted desperately to find out what secret Edie and Elspeth (can I just say how much I ADORE that name?) were keeping from everyone and why they hadn't spoken in 20 years. When the big bad secret was revealed, I can't say I followed the bouncing ball all that easily. I was getting way too mixed up between Edies and Elspeths. Which one was pregnant then? Who was the father? Was it Jack? Did the right woman marry him? I didn't get it. Am I dumb?Robert was... odd as well. Though it was stated somewhere in the middle of the book that he was 37, I kept waffling between thinking he was an old man and a young man. I couldn't picture him in my mind at all. He said he was only 9 years younger than Elspeth, but I don't know, I kept thinking that Edie and Elspeth were in their 50s. I guess that's because Martin and Marijke were older.Speaking of Martin and his wife, I don't know if their side-story while all this other weirdness was going on was needed. I mean, I did enjoy Martin a whole lot. But I don't see why his wife needed to be part of the story since she left and wasn't coming back. She could have been just a talking point, not a real person. I suppose since I didn't connect with that part of the story much is why I feel that way. I thought that Martin and Julia were going to end up together in the end to be honest.This book felt like a Woody Allen film to me. All greys and browns and awkward situations. Weird somehow sexual tension between characters, way too much of a hint of incestuous relationships (which I don't think were in fact incestuous), everyone has a secret they aren't going to tell and everyone spends much of the story being really uncomfortable.In fact, this book made ME uncomfortable. I was so unsettled while reading this I was having nightmares. It wasn't the creepy fall read I thought it would be, but it bothered me in other ways. It's just, odd and strange.What I did like was how the chapters were all irregular. Some were a page and a bit, others longer. I love when books are chopped up like this. It was a lovely asymmetrical crack in the symmetry of twins and, of course, the title.I have not read The Time Traveler's Wife. That story never appealed to me. I picked up THIS book because I was told it had a similar feel to The Thirteenth Tale, which I loved. I didn't find this book similar at all. It was oddly creepy (odd is, like, the best word I can come up with to explain how I feel about it!) but nowhere close to the manner in which The Thirteenth Tale was creepy. (Yet Another Side Note: I still have yet to find a copy of The Thirteenth Tale in hard cover. This frustrates me because I do not want this book in paperback. First time I think I have EVER felt that way. But the hard cover with the jagged paper edges feels like the true form of that book.)I am also happy that I have knocked yet another book off my TBR shelf (er... pile... make that many piles around the house) and I think that perhaps I should tackle that Dreaming of Anastasia book now two, since I'm sort of embarrassed that I have books over 2 years old among the TBR piles!