BOOK: The Three Incestuous Sisters - Audrey Niffenegger

Title: The Three Incestuous Sisters
Author: Audrey Niffenegger
Genre: Visual Novel (art)
Publisher: Random House (2004)
Pages: Hardcover, 176
Language: English
Rating: 8/10
Summary: A novel in pictures about three sisters and their complicated relationship with each other and the man that shows up in their lives.

Review
Now Audrey Niffenegger is worldfamous for her novel The Time Traveler's Wife, but before she wrote that, she designed this huge artbook with a story, that she made and published with her friends. It's been rereleased after her breakthrough, but still hard to find. I'm glad I found it in a bookstore while I was in Iceland.
The illustrations cover the whole of the right page, while on the left are a few lines of text. The paintings have a primitive style and limited colours, which add to the gloom and doom of the story about the three sisters who fight to the death after a man comes into their lives.
I didn't catch the incestuous part of the title, but it is a rather messy story. All in all it fits with the Niffenegger books I already owned; stories about women who know what they want.
I like it.

BOOK: Her Fearful Symmetry - Audrey Niffenegger

Title: Her Fearful Symmetry
Author: Audrey Niffenegger
Genre: Novel
Publisher: Jonathan Cape, 2009
Pages: Paperback, 390
Language: English
Rating: 8/10
Summary: Two American twinsisters inherit an appartment from their English aunt (their mother's estranged twinsister). Despite their mother's objections the girls decide to move to London.

Spoilerfree review
The long awaited second novel after The Time Traveler's Wife. Niffenegger's first book had such an original premise, that I was wondering what kind of story she would come up with next. Of course it was too much to expect a similar surprising story, but 'Her Fearful Symmetry is just as gripping.
In London the girls come to live on the middle floor of a building with three apartments; their aunt's lover lives downstairs and the upstairs apartment is occupied by a man with serious OCD who never goes outside. As it turns out their aunt never left the building either!
The characters won me over after the first three pages; they are such complete humans, with parts to love and hate. It's a joy to get to know all of them through their dialogues and thoughts. Even if the plot itself isn't as exciting as The Time Traveler's Wife, this still is an intriguing story and I recommend the book wholeheartedly.

BOOK: The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Title: The Time Traveler's Wife
Author: Audrey Niffenegger
Genre: Romance? (yech;)
Rating: 10/10 (seriously)
I recommended this book before in my lj. Plotwise I will once again only post the (cropped!) synopsis from the back of the book.
Clare and Henry met when Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six, and they were married when Clare was twenty-two and Henry thirty. Impossible but true, because Henry suffers from a rare condition where his genetic clock periodically resets and he finds himself pulled suddenly into his past or future. In the face of this force they can neither prevent nor control, Henry and Clare struggle to lead normal lives.

Spoilerfree review
Although this story might seem like it belongs in the fantasy-section, it is written like a present-day romance-novel. Clare and Henry talk about their lives and relationship, with chapters divided between both their points of view. They tell their story not by looking back, but while it happens. Because of Henry's inability to stay in the present, the story is not lineair, but often gets off track. So the person telling the story is either young or old and may or may not have knowledge of past (or future!) events. (It's that wibbly wobbly, timey whimey stuff!)

Besides the intriguing story, I really enjoyed the language of the book. It's very dynamic to hear the different voices from the characters at all ages. Both Clare and Henry sound true to their ages, however old they are. They both are completely lovable as kids and adults, not because they are perfect, but because they both have their faults. They are not afraid to confront themselves and each other with all the doubts they have about how to deal with the situation.

The geek in me loved all the medical information on Henry's condition; the time-traveling is not just a fancy plot-device, it is scientifically explained to the smallest details. Nowhere in the story did I doubt the possibility of time-traveling. It is exciting and scary and sometimes simply bloody inconvenient.

I loved this book with a passion. Try it and agree with me.