Suzi Feay

London Gothic

Her Fearful Symmetry

By

Jonathan Cape 390pp £18.99 order from our bookshop

I’m always vaguely suspicious of plots that require identical twins to function, especially in films; it seems such a cheap trick. Audrey Niffenegger’s follow-up to her bestseller The Time-Traveller’s Wife deploys not one but two sets of twins, one pair moreover being genetic ‘mirror images’, with matching but opposite facial moles and reversed internal organs. For fans of TTW, here’s another helping of kooky Gothic, this time with more horror than romance, set in and around Highgate cemetery in London. 

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • The mystery of Jack the Ripper's identity has long been agonised over. But what do we know about his victims?… ,
    • A piece of Literary Review history from way back in 1983: John Haffenden talks to the great Iris Murdoch. ,
    • Britain’s only travelling lit fest, the Garden Museum Literary Festival is heading to Houghton Hall, Norfolk, for a… ,
    • 'The 19th-century German sage is not my idea of a pleasant travel companion' goes hiking with Friedr… ,
    • If you want ideas about what to read next, sign up to our free email newsletter, and get book reviews, archive mate… ,
    • 'The heroic male nude could not, I think, be used today to signify civic pride and glory', as Michelangelo’s 'David… ,
    • 'Munch’s later works show us a man liberated from the torments that gave rise to some of the best-known early works… ,
    Follow Us