Lots of meta-textual hijinks ensue, with Carley’s story paralleled or reflected in various ways by Bree’s own backstory, The Arion Annals (Carley’s favorite TV show, an amalgam of Buffy, Veronica Mars, Lost, among other sources) and Dark Ages, Bree’s novel-in-progress. The Great Gatsby is something of a touchstone for several of the novel’s characters, but that’s only the tip of the literary reference iceberg: a Salinger/Pynchonesque writer-recluse makes an appearance, and the descriptions of McEnroy’s first novel Between Scylla and Alta Vista bear a distinct, if superficial, resemblance to David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest.

As Carley helps Bree shape Dark Ages, she learns about some of the contents of the writers’ trick-bags, and begins to form her own preferences; meanwhile Gibson has the opportunity to show off many of those self-same tricks.

I liked it overall, although I don’t think it quite lived up to its ambitions. At the surface plot level one of the characters undergoes an important change that didn’t seem adequately supported to me. At the meta level, some of the resonances between characters seemed oversold. (I suppose you could argue that could be part of the point; still I would have preferred a slightly more subtle touch). But I certainly remained engaged, not to mention emotionally involved enough to want to see some sense knocked into all of the protagonists.
And I really liked some of Gibson’s writing, not least the opening sentence:

The idea came to Carley’s father amid the whir of a hundred handheld sanders at Bunny Gardner’s Sweet sixteen, an event that had burst into life with the birthday girl’s parents whipping a satin drape off their pedestaled daughter at the center of the Glen Club ballroom, where she held a pose she would later tell her classmates was “Winged Victory, except not headless” through applause people would say she milked a bit too long before stepping down.

One minor note: maybe it’s just me, but I had to mentally increase the younger protagonists ages by a couple years, both to sustain credibility and to not get icked out by some of what they get up to.

needs more demons? I’ll go with “no.”

Her Fearful Symmetry has many symmetrical sets in it, and a goodly quantity of things that are fearful. The most prominent symmetries concern two sets of twins: Edie and Elspeth (one of whom has just died at the outset of the novel) have long been estranged, with an ocean between them. By contrast, Edie’s daughters Julia and Valentina are so close that their attachment might arguably be described as “unhealthy” — certainly, their mutual dependency makes it hard for them to function as individuals in the world. (In one of several instances of Niffenegger perhaps taking things too far, Valentina suffers from situs inversus, a medical condition that makes her literally the mirror image of her sister, even internally.)

Like Nieffenegger’s first novel The Time Traveler’s Wife, Her Fearful Symmetry has a certain formalism to it, but it’s expressed very differently. Where The Time Traveler’s Wife tagged each scene with the date and age of the principals, Her Fearful Symmetry explores its titular conceit in a balletic area of resonances and inversions among its twinned twins and those close to them: chiefly Robert, a guide at Highgate Cemetary and author of an enormous unfinished thesis on its many occupants, and Martin, a writer sharply constrained by obsessive compulsive behavior.

Niffenegger also continues to display the same extrapolative rigor that marked The Time Traveler’s Wife. When, at a certain point it becomes clear that Her Fearful symmetry partakes of a specific English literary tradition, its characters actually read some of the works to which reviewers might be tempted to compare it.

The Time Traveler’s Wife used its nonlinear construction to examine the trajectory of a relationship. Her Fearful Symmetry uses its devices to explore the consequences of unresolved grief. As such, it’s a much darker book. I enjoyed it more before the tone of it became clear, but found it compelling almost to the end. (The actual dénouement left me a little unsatisfied, even if it was required by the novel’s structure.)

Dept. of Meaningless Coincidence: I finished Her Fearful Symmetry on an airplane. The in-flight movie? The adaptation of Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife.

needs more demons? no.

It’s certainly not perfect — two chapters of dialect monograph seemed particularly weak and, the tone is inconsistent (some satirical material about beautiful-people-wannabes is funny, but doesn’t completely mesh with the rest of the novel).

But it’s substantially more ambitious and thematically complex than Wener’s previous books, and mostly she pulls it off. The 1986 explosion of the space shuttle Challenger both literally triggers and figuratively overshadows some of the dysfunction of Claire’s family; when her brother Daniel disappears, she’s convinced she’ll find him in Miami.

What ensues isn’t always strictly credible, but it has a consistent core of emotional truth. It’s also more tightly structured than Wener’s prior books. I thought the chapter heads were especially adroit, starting with the very first, “Obviously a major malfunction.” The eerily flat words spoken by a stunned announcer moments after the explosion are a perfect metaphor for Claire’s family’s inability to directly confront its unhappiness.

Maybe I found The Half Life of Stars particularly affecting because my own less-than-fully-functional family past includes a trip to witness a rocket launch (although my trip to the Cape was actually low on emotional trauma; it’s my favorite nuclear-family vacation memory).

needs more demons? nope.

The tone is much lighter, and it’s less realistic — both plot-wise and in the emotional life of its characters — than Larbalestier’s “Magic” series. I basically enjoyed it, but, frankly, it felt like a bit of a rush-job, and I can’t help but think it would have been more effective as a novella or short story.

needs more demons? kinda sorta.