Seat of Our Pants

Audrey Niffenegger was the author of that well-loved book ‘The Time Traveler’s Wife’ that made a huge splash a few years ago. Thus, expectations were pretty high on her second novel, ‘Her Fearful Symmetry’.

Well, I wish I could say that she lived up to her 5 million USD advance, but no. Sorry. What happened, Audrey? Did you run out of time or pages? Did you get sick of your characters? Was it impossible to tie all the loose ends together? Something happened, because at times I felt like skipping the entire ending.

I won’t bore you with a plot summary for this book, since I didn’t much like it. There were, however, positives. Audrey Niffenegger is very good with moods, building characters and using her setting in ingenious ways. In this book she did all that, but she couldn’t tie it all together and in the end it felt like it should probably not have been published.

We now look forward to her next book. Maybe lessened expectations will allow her to write something thoroughly good again – she has the talent for sure.

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