InvasiveThoughts.com

In 2004, author Audrey Niffenegger wowed the literary world with her beloved debut novel, The Time Traveler’s Wife, a science fiction love story that filled readers with an intense sense of passion and longing that transcended gender and age. We at Invasive Thoughts, along with many of our readers, fell in love with the book and thus were thrilled at the opportunity to delve a little into the artist’s mind in discussing her second novel, Her Fearful Symmetry, published by Simon and Schuster in June of this year. From her home in Chicago, Niffenegger took time to answer a few burning questions that were left after reading the story that she describes as dealing with the coming together and the coming apart of relationships. But these aren’t your typical everyday relationships. There is a certain mysticism involved in this tale of twos.  

1. I found most of the characters in Her Fearful Symmetry, generally, to have a pretty deep dark side that drove some despicable decisions and behaviors on their part. You had said in a video clip on http://www.simonandschuster.com/  that you empathize with each character, but do you also see them as basically good, likeable people, or was their likeability and degree of goodness not something you felt tied to?

I see them as people, all struggling to some degree with their desires and fears. Some of them are more likable than others, but for me that is not the most important trait a character can have. I am more interested in complexity and ambiguity. If a character is "good" then he or she is limited to doing the "good" thing whenever a moral choice confronts him or her. That's very bad for the book as a work of art because it is obvious and repetitive. It's much better to have characters who evolve, learn, surprise us occasionally.

2. In a video clip on http://www.simonandschuster.com/, you mentioned that all of the characters in Her Fearful Symmetry have bits and pieces of you in them. Is there any one character with whom you most relate or whom was most born from you?

Elspeth and Robert are both characters I feel very close to (which might seem a little jarring since they are very different from each other). Elspeth came from a certain sharpness and curiosity in me, and Robert embodies all my passive, hesitant, voyeuristic qualities. He is also a writer and he allowed me to fire off a few tiny observations about the writing life. Neither of them are true alter egos, but they come from me a shade more than some of the other characters.

Some of the characters are portraits of real people (Jessica and James Bates), some were inspired by real people (Martin), some were inspired by other fictional characters (Julia and Valentina).

3. The book's main characters, Julia and Valentina, have a lot of very ritualistic routines in their daily lives together. Are there specific rituals that you enact on a regular basis as part of the creative process?

Not really, I am somewhat chaotic about my work. I indulge in periods of working all the time and then don't work at all for days. If you get too tied to rituals you can feel unable to work without them, and that would be unfortunate.

4. Going in, did you know that Julia and Martin were going to have some romantic/sexual tension within their friendship or did that develop as the book developed?

Yes, when Martin and Robert were first created they were meant to have some quasi-romantic relationships with the twins. I knew from the beginning that these relationships would be intense but unconventional, much more defined by what the characters say to each other and how they feel than about physical involvement.

5. I found the dream sequences in Her Fearful Symmetry to be intriguing. In what way do dreams affect your creative process or day-to-day inspiration?

Once in a while I have dreams that make their way directly into the books. In The Time Traveler’s Wife Clare's baby dreams and Henry's dreams about his feet are dreams I had myself. In Her Fearful Symmetry Robert's dream of Resurrection Day was a dream I had early in the writing when I first began to work at Highgate Cemetery as a tour guide.

6. None of the romantic relationships developed or resolved/concluded in ways I expected, or even hoped for. I was in many cases left with more questions than answers about a character's deepest feelings or motivations. Did you consciously create a sort of dissonance within these relationships?

7. One element that I found intriguing in the novel was the necessary, or perceived necessary, secrecy within relationships, and the showing of different faces to different people, as though one cannot be simultaneously truly free and truly honest with others. How does the contrast between internal and external expression of self factor into your belief system? Do you think the dichotomy differs by culture or is a basic human conflict?

The novel is the art form best suited to showing both internal and external life. That contrast is one of the novel's great subjects, and when one writes a novel in close third person (as Her Fearful Symmetry is written) there is a constant flow between the consciousness of each character and how each character is perceived by the others. One of the themes of Her Fearful Symmetry is the tension between the needs of individuals and relationships, so it's an advantage to be able to show the reader what the characters feel, what they think they feel vs. what's actually happening around them. I don't think it is possible to ever completely know another person, but in fiction we can be another person. There is an immense intimacy. You see it in very old novels (The Tale of Genji) and in novels from many cultures; this is what we most desire from novels.

8. Did Robert genuinely love Valentina for who she really was?

Valentina was twenty-one years old. She wasn't quite grown up yet, and so he loved as much of her as he could know, but she wasn't fully formed. He understood that he was responsible for her and that he failed her.

9. In writing Her Fearful Symmetry, how did you cope with the pressure of the success of your first novel (The Time Traveler’s Wife), or did that not have any effect on your comfort and process of writing Her Fearful Symmetry?

I knew that I was writing a very different book and that some readers who embraced The Time Traveler’s Wife weren't going to find another dose of the exact same qualities in Her Fearful Symmetry. In the months since Her Fearful Symmetry was published readers have told me that they liked one or the other book best, and that's fine with me. I try to think a bit differently every time I undertake a new project. I'm comfortable with experimentation and I hope that readers will be open to trying new things.

10. Many of the characters in both Her Fearful Symmetry and The Time Traveler’s Wife have intense romantic relationships or friendships with people either quite a bit older or quite a bit younger than themselves. Is there some social commentary in that or were those always natural developments that came about with each character?

The age differences helped the plotting. In Her Fearful Symmetry, Robert needs to be between Elsepth and the twins in age so that it isn't completely weird for him to be taking up with Valentina. I also wanted to show how people become more experienced and calm about relationships as they age. So the most successful relationships in the book are between middle-aged and older people. 

11. Music is not a major component in Her Fearful Symmetry or The Time Traveler’s Wife, but in both novels there are atmospheric musical references here and there. In what way does music inspire or influence your writing and art, if at all?

When I am making art I always have music on, it helps me stay focused. When I am writing I never have music, because I'm working with language and the music is distracting. The musical references in the books are there to comment on the characters or the action.

12. When I first saw the movie trailer for The Time Traveler’s Wife, I did not have high expectations but I went to see it anyway since I loved the book so much. While some of the scenic elements in the movie adhere to the book well, the overall complexity of the characters and their relationships with others seemed to be left out. If you had directed the movie, whom would you have cast as Clare and Henry and what would you have done differently?