Twin powers

Obsession is the order of the day. Niffenegger digs deep into various forms of love, including the oppressive closeness between both pairs of twins and the beyond-the-grave ardor of Elspeth and Robert. There's also the outright ­obsessive-compulsive disorder that confines another likable neighbor, Martin, to his apartment. Martin's otherwise loving wife leaves him because of his physical rituals and emotional tics, the hoards of boxed-up belongings and the bleach-chapped hands that are figures for any kind of drive that takes over body and soul.

Robert's obsession with Highgate means he has "lost all perspective" and let his thesis grow to more than 1,400 pages. In her own career, Niffenegger has written roughly as many pages that prove she is a daring, inventive and immensely appealing writer. Her runaway first book, "The Time Traveler's Wife," is the story of two Chronos-crossed lovers whose meetings and partings are beyond their control; her illustrated novels, "The Three Incestuous Sisters" and "The Adventuress," mix equal parts fairy tale and gothic romance. Each of these is a high-concept tour de force, with the flashiness that the term implies; each one is also an incantation to primal desires and horrors. In the present case, is anything more alluring than twins or more cathected than a ghost?

Death comes with its own set of rules. Elspeth's spirit is unable to leave her old apartment, so she hides in a desk drawer and gains strength by teaching herself how to haunt. Eventually she will write in dust and manipulate a Ouija board, assuming the appearance of "the body she had died in, thin and scarred by needle holes." She is not one to let the physical defeat her, even when her preternaturally gorgeous American nieces (who resemble a young Elspeth and her own twin) move in and slowly befriend a bewildered and grieving Robert.