Her Fearful Symmetry, by Audrey Niffenegger
This is the same chick who wrote "The Time-Traveler's Wife" but it is TOTALLY different. "Time Traveler" is a love story with some tragedy thrown in. "Symmetry" is more tragedy with some love stories kind of going on in the background. It seems to be a couple of stories, barely connected, going on at the same time. It starts out really good--with the death of Elspeth Noblin, English rare book dealer, cancer sufferer. She dies and her boyfriend, Robert, comes into the hospital room and removes his shoes and lays down with her. He knows she has died, he knows that things need to be done, but he also knows that there is time for that in a little while and right now he just wants to lay there with her. And then it goes to shit, but it takes a WHILE to get there, so you stick with it. By the time you realize your reading a depression it's too late, you're almost done. Might as well finish it now, right? Elspeth is a twin, but she and her sister do not speak (until a few months before her death, when she writes a few letters). She tells Robert that the story is in her diaries, and if he wants she'll leave the diaries to him. She offers him everything, but he doesn't want it (it's quite sweet). So she leaves the rest of her things to her nieces--also twins--under the condition that they cannot sell her apartment until they have lived in it for one year, and their parents are not allowed to enter. OOOH and in a letter to her sister, one of the last she sends before she passes, she mentions something about Edie (the other twin) "living her (Elspeth's) life". So right there you start thinking it's a stolen-boyfriend situation--which is close, but not exactly. However, the parentage of the younger twins (Valentina and Julia) does surprise you later on in the book. MUCH LATER ON b/c effing Robert chooses not to read the diaries until well into the twins' stay in Elspeth's apartment. Robert and Valentina start a sort of relationship, Julia and the upstairs neighbor start a sort of friendship, and Elspeth watches what she can from the afterlife. She doesn't know why, but she is a ghost, confined to her own apartment. It's actually very sweet, but like all things in this book only AT FIRST. Valentina and Julia turn out to be hugely annoying b/c Valentina is afraid of everything and Julia is a bossy bitch. Valentina is desperate to leave Julia (and later comes up with a very stupid idea concerning suicide and rebirth in her own body via ghostism) and Julia is desperate to have Valentina with her forever. Eventually Elspeth becomes strong enough to make her presence known, which is where Valentina gets her idiotic idea. That backfires, possibly owing to Elspeth's selfishness--she jumps into Valentina's body. The plan was for Valentina to go back into her body after everyone thought she was dead, but her spirit was too weak. I think Elspeth knew she'd be too weak and it was her plan all along to become Valentina.
This all muddled, I know, but I have no plan on fixing it. SO WE SHALL RESTART!!! We shall restart by cutting to the chase: Elspeth--in Val's body, alone. Robert--with Elspeth at the beginning of her reincarnation, then disappears--she's kind of a drag. Being dead and then alive has brought out the mopey bitch, I think. Julia--fares way better without Valentina that she thought she could. Might possibly become "normal". Martin--I barely mentioned him above b/c his story, in my opinion, is not really related much to the other shit--he lives happily ever after. Martin is the sweetest part of the book. Valentina--rides a bird in the coolest part of the entire book, which also happens to be the very end.
Special Topics in Calamity Physics, by Marisha Pessl
I'm going to skip a synopsis of any kind and go straight to my theory. I'm just gonna jump right on in there.
Gareth is DEFINITELY Socrates. Thanks to Amazon.com letting me search within the book! While I was trying to find the argument between Gareth and Servo (one of the few pages they wouldn't let me see, turns out) I found where Servo was talking about living in Paris or some shit and he refers to Gareth as "Soc"!!!! Obviously short for Socrates!!! I admit, while I was reading everyone else's theories on other blogs I had mostly come over to the idea of Gareth being in the Night Watchmen, but it wasn't until this passage that I knew it knew it. I'm very happy that I found that passage, b/c it fucking proved something. Everything else I have is just more conjecture. Did Andreo kill Hannah? I think maybe. Blue comes up with some interesting coincidences--such as a prominent businessman's "suicide" that occurs within like an hour of the house they live in when Andreo works for them, and the night Andreo is shot is also the night the man "hung himself" while leaving a pistol with one bullet missing nearby. Totally adds up. But for some of these notions to work you have to remember what another blogger pointed out--MojoMom, I think? I forgot where I read it--Blue is an unreliable narrator. Within the world of this book she is a young girl living a very sheltered life, and she's reporting things to us through the warped haziness of her own memory and experience. So when she says that her father found Andreo by answering an ad in the paper, you have to think she's mistaken about this, that her father possibly lied to her, for the whole Andreo-hitman theory to work. Otherwise, the the reality is that a member of the Night Watchmen actually recruits a murderer by hiring him to cut his lawn first. How do you think that went? Hey, you speak poor English and seem pretty sucky at yard work anyway, how would you feel about joining this kinda-cult I'm in? I don't think we're supposed to EVER know exactly what Andreo's job is at the house, but we can be safely assured it's not yard work. Maybe Blue's protection? Maybe he's Servo's son and Servo needed Gareth to keep an eye on him for a bit? I don't think working there had anything to do with the murder, either. It was within a short drive from the house, but it's not like he needed an alibi or anything--the whole murder was pulled off to look, successfully (or nearly-so to most small-town coppers) like a suicide.
Also, the Andreo sitings--I thought it was Blue's hormones working on her at first, but smelling his cologne at the end there seems very significant. Also significant is the inclusion of him and his smell in the "Final Exam". (Note on the Final Exam--totally hated by a LOT of fans, this one included, but also sneakily informative--otherwise how would we know about Blue's summer with Zack? I wouldn't have gotten the Andreo reminder, either. Oh, and that's also where the wonderful "Gareth Loses Face With Blue" theory comes from! OH CRAP I just re-read the final exam AGAIN, SOME MORE and realized that really? All of my theories are not MY theories. I got them all from the Final Exam. The Exam TELLS ALLL!!!!!! of Blue's theories.)
Ok, so on that note, I shall begin to poke some holes in them MUAHHAHAHAHAHAA!!!!
Not really.
But this! Maybe-seeing Andreo in Wal-Mart near her 16th birthday? And then she finds an unclaimed cart with nothing but the ShiftBush Invisible Gear? And then works that into Hannah's murder? Really? Kinda reaching there, Blue. Not to say he's doesn't need stuff like that all the time; maybe he really does kill that many of the Watchmen's enemies. Hmm. Just makes me wonder.
Ummm, I'm jumping around too much on this. IT'S 17 DISKS, Y'ALL! GEEZE, I'VE BEEN LISTENING TO THIS STORY FOREVER NOW, MY BRAIN IS SHOT! So, uh, Blue's mom was most likley suicide. Hannah most likely partially caused it by sleeping with Gareth (who I have a love/hate thing with [loves his daughter--yay, but very full of himself and cares little about anyone else--not so yay]). The time line Blue comes up with really confuses me. Hannah and Blue's mom are childhood friends, and Hannah had run away at a young age and changed her name--so how did they meet up as adults long enough to Hannah to screw her husband? Was it a HUGE coincidence that Blue's mom just happens to meet, fall in love with, and marry a member of the Night Watchmen, the group that her bestest friend just happened to run away with years before? I haven't worked that out yet. It's like there are things I feel that I KNOW and then things that don't really gel with what I KNOW but that I can't deny just yet.
OH, and I think the group of kids that Hannah mentors, the Blue Bloods, are just bit players in this. I think the real meat of the story goes with Hannah and the Night Watchmen, and the fact that the Blue Bloods occupy nine-tenths of the book is all smoke and mirrors on Pessl's part.
I have decided that since I do not have anything to listen to in my car yet I'm going to start the disks anew, so if I come up with any more theories I'll just post them as they come. Or I'll find a new audiobook and abandon this to the far reaches of my book shelf. Whichever.
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