As the girls become embroiled in the fraying lives of their aunt's neighbors, they also discover that much is still alive in Highgate, including-perhaps-their aunt, who can't seem to leave her old apartment and life behind. There is Martin, a brilliant and charming crossword puzzle setter suffering from crippling Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Marjike, Martin's devoted but trapped wife and Robert, Elspeth's elusive lover, a scholar of the cemetery. They come to know the building's other residents. The girls move to Elspeth's flat, which borders Highgate Cemetery in London. Julia and Valentina are semi-normal American teenagers-with seemingly little interest in college, finding jobs, or anything outside their cozy home in the suburbs of Chicago, and with an abnormally intense attachment to one another. These two American girls never met their English aunt, only knew that their mother, too, was a twin, and Elspeth her sister. When Elspeth Noblin dies of cancer, she leaves her London apartment to her twin nieces, Julia and Valentina. Six years after the phenomenal success of The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger has returned with a spectacularly compelling and haunting second novel set in and around Highgate Cemetery in London.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |