Her fearful Symmetry —

The words come from Blake’s poem, “TheTyger” — but the title now belongs to Audre Niffenegger, for her second novel.

Her first novel was the wildly successful “The Time Traveler’s Wife” — a book I own but that I confess I haven’t read.

Regal literary is sponsoring a contest to promote the paperback release for the book — I received my plea via an ad-sponsored VSL email. There are two contests, one just for entering. Another for bloggers.

Are you getting the picture?

Here is what the winner of the blogger contest gets:

The prize for the randomly selected winner is:
•   A lunch with a Regal Literary agent and an editor from a Top Five New York City publishing house at your choice of the star-studded Michael’s Restaurant OR the fantastic Four Seasons Grill Room in New York City—get the inside scoop!
•   One signed Special Limited Edition copy of Her Fearful Symmetry
•   One signed Her Fearful Symmetry broadsheet

Not too shabby, eh?

The blogger must write 250 words. How many am I at now? 161.

OK so let me tell you more about “Her Fearful Symmetry”. Here;s the summary avalaible on goodreads.com

When Elspeth Noblin dies of cancer, she leaves her London apartment to her twin nieces, Julia and Valentina. These two American girls never met their English aunt, only knew that their mother, too, was a twin, and Elspeth her sister. Julia and Valentina are semi-normal American teenagers–with seemingly little interest in college, finding jobs, or anything outside their cozy home in the suburbs of Chicago, and with an abnormally intense attachment to one another.

The girls move to Elspeth’s flat, which borders Highgate Cemetery in London. They come to know the building’s other residents. There is Martin, a brilliant and charming crossword puzzle setter suffering from crippling Obsessive Compulsive Disorder; Marjike, Martin’s devoted but trapped wife; and Robert, Elspeth’s elusive lover, a scholar of the cemetery. As the girls become embroiled in the fraying lives of their aunt’s neighbors, they also discover that much is still alive in Highgate, including–perhaps–their aunt, who can’t seem to leave her old apartment and life behind.

Highgate cemetery has its own website. Although Highgates most famous resident is KARL MARX — here are some of Highgate’s famous “internments” as they call them as listed on their site:

Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and other novels

Edward Hodges Baily, sculptor

Beryl Bainbridge, novelist

Farzad Bazoft, journalist, executed by Saddam Hussein’s regime

Jeremy Beadle, TV presenter, writer and producer, “curator of oddities”

Jacob Bronowski, scientist, creator of the television series The Ascent of Man

Robert William Buss, artist and illustrator

Patrick Caulfield, painter and printmaker known for his pop art canvasses

Robert Caesar Childers, oriental scholar and writer

Lucy Clifford, British novelist and journalist, the wife of William Kingdon Clifford

William Kingdon Clifford, mathematician and philosopher

John Singleton Copley, Lord Chancellor and son of the American artist

Sir Charles Cowper, Premier of NSW, Australia (1857–1859)

Charles Cruft, founder of Crufts dog show

John Dickens and Elizabeth Dickens, parents of Charles and models for Micawber and Mrs Nickleby

The Druce family vault, one of whose members was (falsely) alleged to have been the 5th Duke of Portland.

George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), novelist

Claire Epstein, doctor

Michael Faraday, physicist

Paul Foot, campaigning journalist

William Friese-Greene, cinema pioneer. The memorial is credited to Edwin Lutyens

Stella Gibbons, novelist

Lou Gish, actress, daughter of Sheila Gish

Sheila Gish, actress

Robert Grant VC. soldier and police constable

Radclyffe Hall, author of The Well of Loneliness and other novels

Mansoor Hekmat, Communist leader and founder of the Worker-Communist Party of Iran and Worker-Communist Party of Iraq

James Holman, sightless 19th-century adventurer known as “the Blind Traveller”

Claudia Jones, black communist and fighter for social justice

George Henry Lewes, critic

Alexander Litvinenko, Russian dissident turned critic, murdered by poisoning in London

Charles Lucy, artist

Anna Mahler, sculptress

Frank Matcham, theatre architect

Carl Mayer, Austrian-German screenwriter of The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari and Sunrise

Malcolm McClaren, performer, impresario, manager of The Sex Pistols, ‘godfather of punk’

Ralph Miliband, left wing political theorist, father of David Miliband and Ed Miliband

Henry Moore, (1841–93), marine painter

Dachine Rainer, poet and anarchist

Sir Ralph Richardson (1902–83), actor

Christina Rossetti, poet

Frances Polidori Rossetti, mother of Dante Gabriel, Christina and William Michael Rossetti

William Michael Rossetti, co-founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

Raphael Samuel, historian

Thomas Sayers, Victorian pugilist

Elizabeth Siddal, wife and model of artist/poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Sir Donald Alexander Smith, Canadian railway financier and diplomat

Herbert Spencer, evolutionary biologist and laissez-faire economic philosopher

Sir Leslie Stephen, critic, first editor of the DNB, father of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell

Feliks Topolski, Polish-born British expressionist painter

Arthur Waley, translator and oriental scholar

Max Wall, comedian and entertainer

George Wombwell, menagerie exhibitor

Mrs Henry Wood, author

Adam Worth, criminal and possible inspiration for Sherlock Holmes’s nemesis, Professor Moriarty

Patrick Wymark, actor

Sounds interesting, no?

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