As tradition dictates that I indulge in a ghost story or two every October I thought it fitting that I picked up Audrey Niffenegger’s Her Fearful Symmetry. The novel has had some lukewarm reviews (and a particularly scathing one from The Guardian). It certainly isn’t perfect, and is nowhere in the same league as this year’s great spooky tale The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters. And although I did find it a struggle at times, the book held me quite firmly in its final chapters and delivered a particularly satisfying ending.
Niffenegger’s premise is fairly preposterous, where a dying woman decides to leave her flat to a pair of twins – the daughters of her estranged sister. If this is already sounding decidedly gothic there’s more; she’s never met them, the flat overlooks Highgate Cemetery and – when the twins arrive from America to claim their inheritance – their benefactor comes back to haunt them. This is a novel that has to be taken with large pinches of salt. But after The Time Traveller’s Wife this should be no surprise.
The reason why Her Fearful Symmetry is a tricky read has a lot to do with Niffenegger’s uninspired characterisations. Elspeth, our ghost, isn’t particularly likeable. Nor is her grieving partner Robert. The twins, Valentina and Julia, are faceless and quite indistinguishable from eachother, although as pages are turned the reason for their almost total similarity becomes apparent as part of the author’s masterplan based around themes of duality and exchange. The fifth major character is Martin, a neighbour suffering from acute OCD and trapped in his flat. We notices similarities with Elspeth, the spirit who cannot leave her own former home.
Much of the novel’s criticisms are aimed at Niffenegger making the mechanics of her novel too obvious. She is a skilled writer though not an artful one, and some of her tricks are too creaky. For example, she introduces an underaker who just happens to be a dab hand at dentistry – just to sneak him into the plot. In the same way she introduces a ghostly cat. Elsewhere she’s content to tell us things rather than show us things – we’re told that Valentina is suicidal because it helps with the plot progression. There is no real evidence that she is feeling this way at all. If it is true that all great writers show and don’t tell, then Audrey Niffenegger is far from a great writer.
Without giving anything away it is safe to say the Her Fearful Symmetry consists of three twists. The first is very obvious, whilst the second caught me off guard possibly because I wasn’t really paying attention. However, the third revelation – which happens on the final page – did suprise me completely. It’s a very strange ending, and – like The Little Stranger – an ambiguous one, which saves the book at the eleventh hour. Worth staying with so ignore the bad reviews. But don’t expect a masterpiece.
She took her hand from his shoulder. She balled her two hands into fists and punched them in the air, and from the depth of her belly she let loose a scream, a halloo, in a shrill voice like a demon. The press of people took up the cry. They seethed and pushed forward for a view, they catcalled and whistled and stamped their feet. At the thought of the horrible thing he would see he felt hot and cold. He twisted to look up into the face of the woman who was his mother in the crowd. You watch, she said. With the gentlest brush of her fingers she turned his face to the spectacle. Pay attention now. The officers took chains and bound the old person to the stake.
Hilary Mantel first came to my attention with Beyond Black. This is a dark and faintly disturbing novel with a supernatural premise. It’s a ghost story through and through; an unusual one of course, because Mantel is such a distinctive voice. Where the ghosts in Beyond Black are unquestionably real, Mantel keeps them just under the surface in Wolf Hall. The spirit world exists in bad dreams and warnings of ill omens, or in the hauntingly unforgettable horrors of brutal 16th century England where Mantel explores the life of Thomas Cromwell.
My opening quote is from a passage in the book where the young Cromwell is forced to watch a public execution. Violent torture and execution spreads throughout the pages of Wolf Hall. Public burnings and the discussion of horrible ends to life are familiar to Mantel’s world. And the novel is frank about this, beginning with an awful scene of brutality as it describes how the young Cromwell is beaten senseless by his abusive father. Mantel’s novel follows Cromwell’s life as he rises from these pitiful beginnings to sit in the inner circle of Henry VIII. For me, this is much more than a traditional historical book. In a recent interview Hilary Mantel explained some of the reasons for writing Wolf Hall. Whilst anyone with a reasonable knowledge of the period will know Cromwell’s place in history, his personal life has remained mostly unknown. What sort of a man was he? How did he come to be so favoured by the king?
Mantel has set herself a challenge but comes to answer these questions brilliantly, and the book’s key episode is where Cromwell seals his important and enviable bond with the king. Henry is troubled by dark dreams of his dead brother. Unable to make sense of them he calls for Cromwell, and his visitor manages to calm him with the right word, and the best careful gesture. More effectively so than the king’s usual aides. This is a lesson in human nature, the art of politics and the most artful ways of achieving one’s ambitions. For me, Cromwell appears to personify the first modern man in a dark and still primitive age. Classless, forward thinking, wise yet not as cunning as sometimes portrayed by historians or authors. Foremost, above and beyond the dark mentality of the public burnings; spritually and even morally evolved – where his father was cruel Cromwell does not repeat the same brutality on his own family.
Wolf Hall is a difficult novel to read but is worth sticking with for Mantel’s often remarkably poetic pieces of writing. I never thought I’d find myself agreeing with Michael Portillo, but he was right on last night’s Late Review when he said that the book would have benefited from some fiercer editing. At 650 pages it is a marathon read, and doesn’t even cover all of Cromwell’s life. This, I fear, will go into the second and equally lengthy volume. But I also agree with John Carey, who believes that Wolf Hall will win this year’s Booker. It’s just too much of an original and striking piece to ignore.
There’s something about Nick Hornby that makes me want to keep reading his novels, even though there’s a high disappointment factor. After the initial joy of High Fidelity he’s never quite returned to that peak, with his stream of fiction becoming weaker with each release. Only last year’s Slam suggested that he may have returned to something of his former greatness.
Juliet, Naked again looks at male obsession, a subject very familiar to Hornby. The title refers to The Beatles stripped down version of their final release, Let it Be, Naked, where the fictional Tucker Crowe, a reclusive rock star, releases a similarly no nonsense version of his acclaimed Juliet. Crowe is in some ways an American version of Syd Barrett, abandoning his fame to live quietly and in obscurity. The age of the internet has brought the Crowe obsessives together, poring over his lyrics and the countless bootleg albums of his concerts.
The novel’s lead character Alice shares her life with one such Crowe obsessive, a man most content to scour online forums and blogs for information about his hero, going as far as visiting the toilet of the bar where Crowe was last spotted in public.
There’s a lot of humour here, and some wry observations, but sadly Hornby’s latest quickly loses all of its promise. The problem is the unengaging characters which develop little more than simple sketches, and the unrealistic premise which introduces Crowe as a potential love interest for Alice. Oddly, the backstory involving a forgotten English seaside resort was far more interesting than the dull and unconvincing Crowe, and a missed opportunity for developing into a far better book. I’m sorry, but this is one to avoid.
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