Tuesday, March 24, 2015
#3
Okay guys, i finished Her Fearful Symmetry because i am not a giver-upper. I was not impressed. I always judge a book on two things. The first thing i look at is if it has any page-turner qualities. It definitely doesn't. it tries to be with allot of weird twists that just end up very confusing and ridiculous. compared her Niffenegger's last book, The Time Travelers Wife, this is a disappointment. The next thing i judge a book on is the feeling it gives you. For example, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Fault In Our Stars, And Catcher In the Rye all leave you with a magical, lust for more story. Its why they became so famous, and if you ask me, im still lost as to why Catcher in the Rye isn't a movie yet. Either way, this book did not have that. It did have a few interesting characters, but none that had a particularly interesting point of view or personality that you could connect to. So, to summarize the book, Elspeth and Eddie switches places before she married Robert so he was actually married to Eddie the entire time. this is ridiculous and impossible and super unrealistic. then she gets stuck in her apartment as a ghost and ultimately steals one of the girls bodies to live as her when they come to move into her apartment. her husband Robert into okay with it but has no choice. basically what im saying is, that this book is no where near what the time travelers wife was. the OCD man and his wife never got back together and Robert continued to work at the cemetery. Turns out however, i was right about the foreshadowing. The title, "Her Fearful Symmetry" is titled that way because the twin girls were actually symmetrical. One girl had her heart on the wrong side of her body, opposite her sisters. This is interesting and all, but has nothing to do with the story other than the title. another thing i didn't like about the book, (not to totally burn it into the ground) was the flat dialogue. there wasn't allot of conversation or interesting character development, other than the man with OCD. The action didn't move quickly either. when you type it out it sounds worse than it actually is, because lets face it, it got published. however, i cant think of anything i actually liked about it and ultimately forced myself to read it.
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I'm sorry you weren't able to get into this book, I've never read it but from other experiences I can agree that when a book doesn't have qualities that make it interesting to you or "page-turner qualities" it can be quite a turn off. I can also agree that some books do try too hard with their plot twists and it can make it not only difficult to follow and keep up with but also just not worth it to keep up with, especially if you're not engaged with the story to begin with. Books with titles that also don't have much to do with the overall story or don't use consistent plot lines, like the fact that the sisters had mirrored hearts, can be really annoying, although I would've liked to know if it really wasn't dealt with at all or if it was just dealt with sloppily. I would wanna know what drew you to this book in the first place though, and what you're initial expectations of it was. Also, are the two things you listed above the only things you look for in a book? If so, does having one or the other change how you judge a book or does it have to be both those things done well? Overall I think this was a good, honest review (because sometimes people don't like to say they didn't like a book) and a good job!
ReplyDeleteSo Jordan you would totally recommend this to other people to read right, it sounds so interesting. Lol but just form reading your last post and this one I can see why you may have disliked this book so much. I believe in your last post there was this not that i cant remember who got that kinda caught my attention and wanted me to learn more about the not but then i could be totally mistaken and there could be no not and i'm just making shit up. Oh well the book does seem to be like a total fall of from the rest of the book that Niffenegger (that's the author right?) wrote because you do hear so much of Fault In Our Stars, and Catcher In the Rye with being such great books. Over all i think that you did a really great job of making writeng your minf
ReplyDeleteWow, this book sounds horrible! I do, however, love the idea of the two girls being symmetrical, that had a lot of promise. Maybe you can use the idea for some flash fiction! I loved reading this report! It sounded like a professional critic that might write for the Wall Street Journal or something of the like. You described the “lust for more story”exactly accurately. However, I feel that a character you can connect to is not so important as a character you can learn from and wonder at. And you were right, this was super unrealistic, and not in a good fantasy/sci-fi sense. Also, flat dialogue is the absolute worst! Major props for finishing the book, that’s quite a feat!
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