Pam read and liked Shannon's review of Her Fearful Symmetry: A Novel:

"I've been desperately seeking The Right Book. Unfortunately, The Right Book isn't from a specific genre, or by a specific author or set in a certain period in time. That would be too easy, you see. The book I'm looking for is one that winds its wa...more I've been desperately seeking The Right Book. Unfortunately, The Right Book isn't from a specific genre, or by a specific author or set in a certain period in time. That would be too easy, you see. The book I'm looking for is one that winds its way into your heart and soul, takes you deep into the characters' lives and then squashes your heart, rips it from your chest and leaves it beating weakly on the table while you weep. Those books are hard to come by. At most, I find one or two a year. But The Time Traveler's Wife was one of those books - the kind that left me emotionally devastated and deeply satisfied at the same time. So when I was desperately craving heartbreak in a book, I asked my husband to please buy Her Fearful Symmetry for me on his way home from work. By the time it arrived home with him, I was 30 pages in to two other books. After reading the first chapter or two of this one, I set those aside and dove in.

Her Fearful Symmetry, sadly, did not break my heart like I wanted it to. But I loved, loved, loved these characters. They are so real, so broken, so crazy - just like we all are. I found myself wondering which character was crazy in the way most similar to my own neuroses and I decided that we are all crazy like these characters, just less overtly.

It says a lot about how great these characters are that I could relate to nearly all of them, male or female, alive or dead. And I loved that Niffenegger created them with clean, readable prose that didn't require the reader to slog through descriptions but did result in three-dimensional, unique characters who are neither innocent nor blameless.

Where I felt a bit let down by this book was that I could see the ending coming. I prefer to be completely surprised by the turns a novel takes. (I will acknowledge that I was pretty far into the book before I knew what was coming.)

If you want a book that has supernatural elements with real and earthly characters, I highly recommend this book. If you want a book that populates your mind with quirky, needy, devious and certifiably insane people, grab this one right away. I hope I don't have to wait another six years for Niffenegger's next book - that would be truly heartbreaking.(less) "