Another day, another author event (and another book, of course!)

For whatever reason, this week has been heavy on author events.

It started last Sunday. The Chicagoans among you know that many of us (recent surveys suggest as many as 80% of us) have never been reconciled to Macy's having changed the name of Marshall Field's. Every year at this time, there is a demonstration under the clock at the State Street store.

This year, following the protest, there was a book discussion and signing at the State Street Borders, just down the block, with Gayle Soucek, the author of Marshall Field's: the Store that Helped Build Chicago. There was much reminiscing about the glory that was Field's, as most of the people there were either former employees, former customers, or both. Soucek is currently writing a book about Chicago catastrophes, and she commented that it was noteworthy how involved Field's was (the store and the man) in helping during a civic crisis. She also said that her publisher told her not to "bash" Macy's in the book, but put a blurb on the back highlighting the controversy!

On Monday, I blew off my Italian class to go hear Tim Gunn talk about his new book, Gunn's Golden Rules: Life's Little Lessons for Making it Work. This was at the Michigan Avenue Borders, and, boy, I think they are going to lose some customers over the way the event was organized, or, should I say, not organized. They were handing out wristbands starting at 9:00 a.m., with several different colors, only the first two of which got seats. But when people arrived, they lined up in order of arrival, so that when the first two colors were called to be seated, people dashed madly from all over. When the signing started, they gathered the various color groups in different parts of the store, but the employees who were doing so couldn't be heard, so people wandered about haphazardly. There was a huge long wait, but at least we had books to read!

Gunn, of course, was charming, an oasis of graciousness and calm amidst the chaos and confusion. He really must have been exhausted, because he was signing books for a good three hours or more, way past the time the store normally closes. It's nice to see someone on a show like Project Runway trying to raise the level of discourse and maintaining decent grammatical and vocabular standards. Besides, he collects architectural pop-ups, so he clearly has good taste.

On Thursday, it was Audrey Niffenegger at the Harold Washington Library Center, talking about her new graphic novel, The Night Bookmobile. Technical difficulties prevented her from showing the photographs that she took, from which the drawings were derived, but she read the short story which was the basis for the Guardian serial which was the basis for the book. This is the first installment of a work to be called The Library; I'm definitely looking forward to the rest.

Today I went to the 57th Street Children's Book Fair, and staffed the Friends of the Library table for a couple of hours. There were quite a few authors in evidence, but I didn't get any, though I was tempted by The Sixty-Eight Rooms, by Marianne Malone, about strange doings in the Art Institute of Chicago's Thorne Rooms.

Her Fearful Symmetry

80. Her Fearful Symmetry, by Audrey Niffenegger

It seems only appropriate to observe Hallowe'en by reviewing a novel in which one of the main characters is a ghost.

Elspeth Noblin and Edwina Moore are twins who have been estranged for years. When Elspeth dies, she leaves her entire estate to her nieces, Valentina and Julia, who are mirror twins, with the stipulation that they must reside in flat, overlooking Highgate Cemetery, for one year, and that their parents must not set foot in the place. When the twins arrive, they discover that although Elspeth may be dead, she still inhabits her old home. At first merely a felt presence, she gradually begins to be seen by, and then to communicate with, the twins, as well as her lover, who lives in the flat below.

Valentina and Julia have very different personalities. Julia is the dominant and decisive twin, who looks after asthmatic and timid Valentina. Each becomes involved with a neighbor, Valentina becoming attached to Robert, Elspeth's younger lover, and Julia spending time with Martin, the upstairs neighbor whose OCD keeps him indoors all the time and led his wife to return to her native Netherlands.

As their year passes, Valentina's desire for independence intersects with and is seized upon by Elspeth's ghost, who conceives a scheme to help her break free of Julia, a scheme in which they involve Robert. (And that's about all I can say without giving a lot away!)

I've been a fan of Niffenegger's writing for years, when I discovered her writing the catalog for Chicago's Center for Book and Paper Arts (though I don't think she writes it any more), and Her Fearful Symmetry did not disappoint. This is an eerie book, with surprises around every corner, beautifully evocative. At certain points, I found myself wanting to say, "No! Don't do that! It's a mistake!", and actually stopped reading occasionally because I feared what would happen next. I wasn't always right.

Readers of Niffenegger's other works with recognize the Gothic sensibility as well as a variety of familiar themes: rival sisters, pregnancy, odd physical characteristics (Valentina has situs inversus, in which the internal organs are reversed), wandering ghosts, flight (in both senses of the word). There were images which here are in words but that I recalled from her illustrated novels, The Three Incestuous Sisters and The Adventuress. In this novel, as well as The Time Traveler's Wife, she has taken ideas which in those novels are presented in isolated and (generally) unspecified locations and times, and placed them in the contemporary world, where they are all the more startling for their incongruity.