REVIEW - HER FEARFUL SYMMETRY

"Her Fearful Symmetry" by Audrey Niffenegger
Product Description(Amazon.com)
Julia and Valentina Poole are twenty-year-old sisters with an intense attachment to each other. One morning the mailman delivers a thick envelope to their house in the suburbs of Chicago. Their English aunt Elspeth Noblin has died of cancer and left them her London apartment. There are two conditions for this inheritance: that they live in the flat for a year before they sell it and that their parents not enter it. Julia and Valentina are twins. So were the girls’ aunt Elspeth and their mother, Edie.
The girls move to Elspeth’s flat, which borders the vast Highgate Cemetery, where Christina Rossetti, George Eliot, Stella Gibbons, and other luminaries are buried. Julia and Valentina become involved with their living neighbors: Martin, a composer of crossword puzzles who suffers from crippling OCD, and Robert, Elspeth’s elusive lover, a scholar of the cemetery. They also discover that much is still alive in Highgate, including—perhaps—their aunt.
# Paperback: 406 pages
# Publisher: Scribner; Reprint edition (September 29, 2010)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 1439169012
# ISBN-13: 978-1439169018

MY THOUGHTS: This is my book clubs choice for September. I have wanted to read this book and I'm really glad I did. It was a very good book. I really liked all the characters. I really liked Martin a lot. I could feel for him. Does he get to leave his apartment? Does Robert get his Thesis done on Highgate Cemetery? As Julia and Valentina move to London they seem to grow apart. Valentina wants to be separate from Julia. With the help of their Aunt Elspeth's ghost they think of something that seems so impossible. But does it work? Will Valentina get her wish and be separate from Julia? You'll have to read the book to find out the outcome of this very interesting book.

Two more done. . . slowly

First off, i absolutely loved the Time Travellors wife and gobbled it up over a weekend.

The Time Travellers Wife is a story of the 'real' love between Claire and Henry through time and thier lives. Nicely written, this book leaps back and forth through time but still paints a coherent picture. I loved dipping in and out of this book,experiencing the justipositioning of Claire's youth and Henry's middle age.

This is just a beautifully story, written in an amazing way that grabs you and won't let you go till you've read that sweet ending with a tear soaked face.

So i flew threw this book and felt like i was on a roll, i then picked up Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea Quartet (as its both on this challenge and on my basics challenge list), which has won numerous awards and is seen as one of the key pieces of literature in the fantasy genre.

*sigh*

God, i really wanted to love these books as they've inspired so many of my favourite writers and i had really high hopes for enjoying them (maybe that was part of the problem). Although i can appreciate the plot and story arc of the Earthsea Cycle (i had four books in one), i just didn't connect with the characters or story at all.

I felt completely indifferent!

Strangely, i feel slightly disappointed in myself for not appreciating/connecting with these books, especially when i love reading/writing fantasy - I feel like i've now lost my membership card lol.

I guess i'll just have to put this series to one side and reread at a later date and see how i go.

I'd love to know what other people thought of this series? and if you liked/loved it, what was it about it that appealed?

or if there are other works by Ursula Le Guin which i might redeem myself with? lol.