I am glad it has been a few years since The Time Traveler’s Wife for else one might be tempted to compare this to that rare book. Don’t get me wrong, this is wonderful too, and very clever. It’s easier to follow, nicely spooky and chilling at the end.
Exploring themes of love, loss and identity, it is a 21st century ghost story set largely in London and concerns twins and their unusual inheritance. A remarkable book, a touch disturbing but beautifully executed.
A bad thing about dying is that I'm starting to feel as though I'm being erased.
When Elspeth Noblin dies she leaves her beautiful flat overlooking Highgate Cemetery to her twin nieces, Julia and Valentina Poole, on the condition that their mother is never allowed to cross the threshold. But until the solicitor's letter falls through the door of their suburban American home, either Julia nor Valentina knew their aunt existed.
The twins hope that in London their own, separate, lives can finally begin but they have no idea that they've been summoned into a tangle of fraying lives, from the obsessive-compulsive crossword setter who lives above them to their aunt's mysterious and elusive lover who lives below them and works in the cemetery itself.
As the twins unravel the secrets of their aunt, who doesn't seem quite ready to leave her flat, even after death, Niffenegger weaves together a delicious and deadly ghost story about love, loss and identity.
'A ghostly love story and a lovely ghost story' - Tatler
The Vintage Classics Weird Girls series: Dive into the depraved, delectable depths of weird fiction with nine books by nine pioneering female authors. Bold, disruptive, chilling and enchanting, these tales of the weird are strange enough to get lost in.
Audrey Niffenegger is a writer and visual artist who lives in Chicago. She is a full time professor in the Interdisciplinary Book Arts MFA Program at the Columbia College Chicago Center for Book and Paper Arts, where she teaches writing, letterpress printing, and fine edition book production. Her amusements include collecting taxidermy and reading comic books. Miss Niffenegger spent her youth hiding in her bedroom and painting her fingernails black while listening to Patti Smith and Gang of Four, but she is feeling better now, thanks.
