audrey niffenegger | Reading In Winter

RELEASE DATE: September 1, 2010
AUTHOR LINKS: WEB / GOODREADS / FACEBOOK
PUBLISHER: Henry N. Abrams
FORMAT: Hardcover
SOURCE: Library
CHALLENGE: None
BUY NOW FROM: Amazon

Audrey Niffenegger, the New York Times bestselling author of The Time Traveler’s Wife and Her Fearful Symmetry, has crafted her first graphic novel after the success of her two critically acclaimed “novels-in-pictures.”First serialized as a weekly column in the UK’s Guardian newspaper, The Night Bookmobile tells the story of a wistful woman who one night encounters a mysterious disappearing library on wheels that contains every book she has ever read. Seeing her history and most intimate self in this library, she embarks on a search for the bookmobile. But her search turns into an obsession, as she longs to be reunited with her own collection and memories.

The Night Bookmobile is a haunting tale of both transcendence and the passion for books, and features the evocative full-color pen-and-ink work of one of the world’s most beloved storytellers.

MY REVIEW

I’ve come to accept that Audrey Niffenegger is just a little bit “odd” in her writing. The Night Bookmobile – a cross between a regular novel and a graphic novel, maybe? – was an interesting read and perfect for book lovers, in a way. Continue reading →

RELEASE DATE: September 29, 2009
AUTHOR LINKS: WEB / GOODREADS / FACEBOOK
PUBLISHER: Scribner (an imprint of Simon & Schuster)
FORMAT: Hardcover
SOURCE: Purchased
BUY NOW FROM: Amazon

Audrey Niffenegger’s spectacularly compelling second novel opens with a letter that alters the fate of every character. Julia and Valentina Poole are semi-normal American twenty-year-olds with seemingly little interest in college or finding jobs. Their attachment to one another is intense. One morning the mailman delivers a thick envelope to their house in the suburbs of Chicago. From a London solicitor, the enclosed letter informs Valentina and Julia that their English aunt Elspeth Noblin, whom they never knew, has died of cancer and left them her London apartment. There are two conditions to this inheritance: that they live in it for a year before they sell it and that their parents not enter it. Julia and Valentina are twins. So were the estranged Elspeth and Edie, their mother.

The girls move to Elspeth’s flat, which borders the vast and ornate Highgate Cemetery, where Christina Rossetti, George Eliot, Radclyffe Hall, Stella Gibbons and Karl Marx are buried. Julia and Valentina come to know the living residents of their building. There is Martin, a brilliant and charming crossword-puzzle setter suffering from crippling obsessive compulsive disorder; Marijke, 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.

MY REVIEW (MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS)

I loved this book. Of course, I feel biased because when The Time Traveler’s Wife came out, I loved that as well. And the movie. What can I say? Audrey Niffenegger can write a good story! Continue reading →