Whoa. Baby. Takes Ghosts to a Whole New Level.

Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler's Wife, has completely blown me away AGAIN with her newest book, Her Fearful Symmetry. I've heard mixed reviews about this book, but I found it really, REALLY good. It puts a whole new spin on ghost stories... in fact, the ghost in this book is not the scary part, it's the twins that are truly frightening.
You see, the story is all about twins. First there are Edie and Elspeth, in London. Elspeth was in love with an American, Jack, but when Edie steals Jack away and heads back to America, it seems the twins will never speak again. And as always, they grow old. Edie has twins in America with Jack; mirror twins, meaning one is normal, but the other is the exact inverted opposite of her (her heart's on the right, she parts her hair on the other side, etc). Their names are Julia and Valentina. Julia is the fearless bossy one, and Valentina (a.k.a. The Mouse) is the timid one, supposedly scared of everything and very fragile with her numerous health problems. But Valentina is getting sick of her twin, and wants to be her own person. She's through with feeling like half a being, especially since she's the half that never has a say in anything.
Meanwhile Elspeth gets cancer and dies, with only her neighbor/boyfriend, Robert, for company. She leaves her personal papers to Robert and tells him to read them, saying they contain a few bombshell secrets so they should never be shared. She also leaves her flat to her twin nieces, Julia and Valentina, under the conditions that they never let their parents enter the flat and they live in it a year before they sell it.
Now Julia and Valentina are living in the flat; Julia is having a ball exploring the whole new environment, especially the cemetery next door and her upstairs neighrbor, an agorophobic man named Martin who desperately misses his wife but can't leave his apartment to find her. Valentina is trying to rediscover who she is.
Then the twins (and Robert, who lives downstairs) start seeing Elspeth's ghost. At first it's just little things like shadows and pages in books being turned, but then Elspeth starts communicating with them by writing in dust and Ouija boards.
But here's when things get twisted and creepy: Valentina decides she wants to escape from her own twin so badly, she'll do anything... even fake her own death. When she enlists the ghost's help, things get SO VERY SCREWY that I was about to scream. Seriously. You'll never guess what they do.
This whole book has a sepulchral (love that word!) for a few reasons: the ghost (duh), the cemetery next door (which kind of plays a role throughout the whole book which I thought was really cool), and because of all the melancholy people in this book. Sure, there are many happy points in this book, but like all good novels, there is a definite taste of sadness in it. I think, although the plot is really sad, it starts off charmingly in a way and overall it was a good book to start off the year on. ♠♠♠♠♠