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After her bestselling novel, The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger returns with a wonderfully creepy ghost story about twins and London’s High Gate Cemetery.

Elspeth Noblin dies at the beginning of this new novel, but she sticks around her apartment watching over her twin nieces from America,  Julia and Valentina and her younger lover Robert. Robert is writing his thesis on the famous London cemetery where Karl Marx, George Eliot and Christina Rossetti are buried. Elspeth leaves her money to her American nieces, who are currently aimless twenty-somethings, on the condition that they live in her apartment for a year and don’t invite their parents. Also in the apartment building is Martin, a crossword puzzle setter with crippling OCD, whose wife has to deal with his constant hand washing and rituals. There is a lot of obsession going around: Julia and Valentina with each other; Robert with his dead love Elspeth; Robert with the High Gate Cemetary and of course with his rituals, tics and hoarding.

It starts to get complicated when Robert falls for Valentina and is torn between a ghost and an innocent virgin. Fans of the macabre will be pleased to find grave robbing and hauntings.

I've noticed how hard the English language is lately, and I'd like to say my hats off to those of you who've mastered it! I can't say I've witnessed anyone who adheres to perfect speaking English, even those of us who call it our native tongue. In addition, I just discovered that words and phrases are inherited, even the tendency toward improper language usage comes from our relatives.


We learn to speak from our family members who pass down words and phrases, in much the same way they do jewelry and other valuables, especially in the South.

I use phrases today that were popular when my grandmother was a young adult, most of which I don't understand the meaning; phrases like, “Dat Burn It” and “Wait a Cotton Picking minute! In addition to, “ I mean seriously”

I think that phrases are as much a part of our genetic code as physical characteristics and attitude, I mean seriously.

Although, I will write some examples of improper language usage. first let me tell you about what my son and mother both said within weeks of each other...


I’ll tell you about what my mother said first- While watching a television show we mutually enjoy, a series of commercials flashed across the screen, during what the networks refer to as "a message from our sponsors." (we watch commercials)

Most of the advertisements informed us of the necessary gadgets one must have in order to enjoy life, but then we saw a commercial about a local newscaster …

That’s when my mother, said, though her eyes never left the screen,

”I don’t like her”

She said this sentence in a tone someone would use when speaking about someone familiar, like a neighbor, except she meant the newscaster on television! Then she followed up with...

"She is much too chipper to report the news."

"Mom you don’t know her, how are earth can you make a judgment on someone you don’t even know?"

I can tell by the way her hair is parted that she is not a nice person," she said.

"Mom that reminds me of the time you said that Howard Trump had selfish feet!"

"How can someone’s feet look selfish? Actually, how can someone’s “foot” look selfish, for that matter?" It is a foot, a part of a person’s body" I rambled, exasperated...

"That’s like saying someone’s hands look happy, or someone’s hair is funny. As if body parts have there own identity, it’s crazy, Mom."


Now, isn’t that the craziest thing you've ever heard anyone say?

How can you dislike a person because of the way his or her feet look?

My mother is an extremely intelligent well-read person, but when she saw Donald Trumps feet on the cover of a People magazine, she decided she didn’t like him.

Oh, she will say it’s not true, and if you asked her, she would probably get angry, like she will do if she reads this post, but she did.

Anyway, I thought what a weird way to use words, and what if we inherit word usage like hair and eye color?

I couldn’t help but wonder, since I saw the same characteristic in my son a week or so before, when he said something similar about an actor, while he was watching television!

When we were watching a commercial, (see what I mean about commercials)when I noticed him watching an actor he obviously didn’t care for, then I hear him say,

“I don’t like him. There is just something about him. The way that his mouth looks or something, I don’t know. I just don’t like him.”

This is when I thought to myself…”Does everyone in my family use words this way?” Do these kinds of language problems run in families?”

And "run" is my next example of the improper use of a word. I just said how does a trait “run” in a family?

If you can, imagine a little character with “trait” written on the front of his
shirt, hopping from one generation to the next, only to land in every other generation at whim?

When people say traits “run” in families, it reminds me of the phrase “he goes” instead of “he says.” That’s another popular English phrase frequently used even by grown-ups. My son and even my friends, say it all the time, for example, it's one of following phrases depending on whose talking, “Mom, she goes…or Ann, she goes”… It drives me crazy.

If character traits run in families, then I guess they skip over generations like stones, and dat burn it… there’s nothing I can do about it, except…

Wait a cotton picking’ minute, what am I writing...