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Her Fearful Symmetry
Audrey Niffenegger
2009 · 406 pages · Horror
How it reads
Her Fearful Symmetry is horror (literary ghost story, specifically), and its dominant mood is eerie. It's atmospheric and uncanny, with a sense that something is wrong. It's a slow burn: character-driven, with a payoff that comes from accumulation rather than twists. It rewards attention and suits unhurried reading more than five-minute gaps.
It's set in a big city setting, in the present day, told in the third person across several viewpoints. Its central concerns are family, loss and grief and secrets. In weight it's heavy and literary — denser, more serious, and more demanding of you.
It stands alone, so there's nothing else you need to read first or after. The ending is left open, for you to argue about. At 406 pages it's an ordinary novel's length. It's well known, the kind of book most keen readers have heard of.
Pick it up if…
- you're in the mood for something eerie
- you have time to settle in
- you want something to chew on
Maybe not if…
- you need something cosy or heartwarming
- you're reading in five-minute gaps
All 15 dimensions
- Genre
- horror
- Author gender
- female
- Author experience
- established
- Setting: place
- big city
- Setting: time
- contemporary
- Mood / feeling
- eerie
- Pace
- slow burn
- Tone / weight
- heavy and literary
- Length
- medium
- Narrative style
- third person, several viewpoints
- Publication era
- recent
- Popularity
- well known
- Series vs standalone
- standalone
- Themes
- family, loss and grief, secrets
- Ending style
- ambiguous
What these mean: the 15 dimensions of a book.
Books with a similar reading
The closest books in Match Book's catalogue across the same dimensions, and what they share.
- Fever DreamSamanta SchweblinShares: horror, eerie mood, heavy and literary tone, ambiguous ending
- The Shadow at the Bottom of the WorldThomas LigottiShares: horror, eerie mood, heavy and literary tone, slow burn
- The Twenty Days of TurinGiorgio De MariaShares: horror, eerie mood, heavy and literary tone, slow burn
The Witching HourAnne RiceShares: horror, eerie mood, heavy and literary tone, slow burn- The Ghost WomenJennifer MurphyShares: horror, eerie mood, heavy and literary tone, ambiguous ending
- The UnmothersLeslie J. AndersonShares: horror, eerie mood, heavy and literary tone, ambiguous ending
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