Tuesday

I've just finished "Her Fearful Symmetry" by Audrey Niffenegger (author of the "Time Traveler's Wife"). It kept me reading until the end, which is a compliment. I used to devour novels, but these days I am less tolerant of slack writing, character creation and plotting and I will give up on books if they do not hold my attention. What I think Niffenegger did well was blend the supernatural with the everyday. I am no fan of ghost stories, however this one worked mainly because Niffenegger wrote about the supernatural as if it were ordinary and did not attempt any explanations.

I also liked the book because it was set around Highgate cemetery and that's an area of London which is vaguely familiar to me, plus I like cemeteries. Just walking through one yields a wealth of stories and questions. We have a wonderful cemetery in Scarborough, rich in atmosphere and tales. I noticed a nineteenth century gravestone there the other day, to a woman who had been born in France and I wondered what had brought her to this small town in Yorkshire by the cold North Sea to die so young.