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Asymmetry
A singularly inventive and unforgettable debut novel about love, luck, and the inextricability of life and art, from 2017 Whiting Award winner Lisa Halliday.
Told in three distinct and uniquely compelling sections, Asymmetry explores the imbalances that spark and sustain many of our most dramatic human inequities in age, power, talent, wealth, fame, geography, and justice. The first section, Folly tells the story of Alice, a young American editor, and her relationship with the famous and much older writer Ezra Blazer. A tender and exquisite account of an unexpected romance that takes place in New York during the early years of the Iraq War, Folly also suggests an aspiring novelist’s coming-of-age. By contrast, Madness is narrated by Amar, an Iraqi-American man who, on his way to visit his brother in Kurdistan, is detained by immigration officers and spends the last weekend of 2008 in a holding room in Heathrow. These two seemingly disparate stories gain resonance as their perspectives interact and overlap, with yet new implications for their relationship revealed in an unexpected coda.
A stunning debut from a rising literary star, Asymmetry is an urgent, important, and truly original work that will captivate any reader while also posing arresting questions about the very nature of fiction itself.
Told in three distinct and uniquely compelling sections, Asymmetry explores the imbalances that spark and sustain many of our most dramatic human inequities in age, power, talent, wealth, fame, geography, and justice. The first section, Folly tells the story of Alice, a young American editor, and her relationship with the famous and much older writer Ezra Blazer. A tender and exquisite account of an unexpected romance that takes place in New York during the early years of the Iraq War, Folly also suggests an aspiring novelist’s coming-of-age. By contrast, Madness is narrated by Amar, an Iraqi-American man who, on his way to visit his brother in Kurdistan, is detained by immigration officers and spends the last weekend of 2008 in a holding room in Heathrow. These two seemingly disparate stories gain resonance as their perspectives interact and overlap, with yet new implications for their relationship revealed in an unexpected coda.
A stunning debut from a rising literary star, Asymmetry is an urgent, important, and truly original work that will captivate any reader while also posing arresting questions about the very nature of fiction itself.
288 pages, Board Book
First published February 6, 2018
About the author
Lisa Halliday
6 books372 followersLisa Halliday is an American writer whose work has appeared in Granta and The Paris Review. She received a Whiting Award for Fiction in 2017. Her first novel, Asymmetry, will be published in twenty languages and was named one of the Top Ten Books of 2018 by The New York Times, The New Yorker, Time, and several other publications. Asymmetry was also one of President Obama's favorite books of the year and was shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Award, the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award, the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, the Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize, and the Prix du Premier Roman. Lisa grew up in Medfield, Massachusetts, and currently lives in Italy with her husband and daughter.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 3,509 reviews
March 13, 2018
I'm between 3 and 3.5 stars.
How do you judge a book—do you just consider whether or not you liked it, or do you also take into consideration whether or not the author's attempt at conveying a message worked for you? This dilemma arose for me after reading Lisa Halliday's debut novel, Asymmetry .
The book is unevenly divided into three novellas. I loved the first one, enjoyed parts of the second one, and really didn't understand the purpose of the third one. Since the third novella portrayed a character from the first novella in a rather unflattering (although not unsurprising) light, I didn't enjoy it at all, and kept waiting for something more to happen.
While it appeared that the first two novellas are completely unrelated, apparently the third novella sheds some light on the characters in the first two, or at least deepens their meaning. I'm not ashamed to say I didn't see that, and honestly, I'm not a fan of having to read something so closely as if to search for hidden meaning. But unfortunately, it dampened my overall enthusiasm for the book, despite it being well written.
"Folly," my favorite, is the story of Alice, a young editor living in New York City shortly after 9/11. She is having an affair with the famed writer Ezra Blazer, a legendary author who is significantly older than she is. Their relationship occurs in fits and starts, as Blazer does everything he can to ensure Alice doesn't become too attached, and in a small way, ensure he doesn't become too dependent on her. As the novella explores Alice's life both with and without Blazer, it also explores the writing process, and how what we read has an influence on what we write, and how we see.
"Madness" follows Amar, an Iraqi-American man who is detained at Heathrow while on the way to visit his brother in Kurdistan. The novella juxtaposes his interrogation, as he tries to make sense of why he is being detained beyond his heritage, and his experiences the last time he and his family visited Iraq. It also provided commentary on identity, ambition, relationships, and the fraught environment of post-Saddam Iraq.
In the third, and shortest, novella, "Ezra Blazer's Desert Island Discs," Blazer returns to appear on the famed BBC radio program and shares his thoughts on which music he'd most want to have with him if stranded. Beyond a list of musical acts and their significance, Blazer shares some memories from his life which provide more insight into his character—and he flirts shamelessly with the program's host.
I believe Halliday really has some talent as a writer. There were a number of times I marveled at her language and imagery. I loved Alice's character in particular, and was fascinated by her relationship with Blazer. I'll admit that I felt a little gypped when her story ended and Amar's began. Amar's story was uneven—I definitely found the scenes with him being interrogated far more compelling than the rest of his rather disaffected life.
While this was an intriguing read, as I mentioned, I didn't see the thread that connected the novellas, so the book as a whole didn't work for me. This could work for others, however—I know a few people who thought it's one of the best books written thus far in 2018. Regardless of where you end up, Halliday is a talent worth watching.
See all of my reviews at itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com, or check out my list of the best books I read in 2017 at https://itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-best-books-i-read-in-2017.html.
How do you judge a book—do you just consider whether or not you liked it, or do you also take into consideration whether or not the author's attempt at conveying a message worked for you? This dilemma arose for me after reading Lisa Halliday's debut novel, Asymmetry .
The book is unevenly divided into three novellas. I loved the first one, enjoyed parts of the second one, and really didn't understand the purpose of the third one. Since the third novella portrayed a character from the first novella in a rather unflattering (although not unsurprising) light, I didn't enjoy it at all, and kept waiting for something more to happen.
While it appeared that the first two novellas are completely unrelated, apparently the third novella sheds some light on the characters in the first two, or at least deepens their meaning. I'm not ashamed to say I didn't see that, and honestly, I'm not a fan of having to read something so closely as if to search for hidden meaning. But unfortunately, it dampened my overall enthusiasm for the book, despite it being well written.
"Folly," my favorite, is the story of Alice, a young editor living in New York City shortly after 9/11. She is having an affair with the famed writer Ezra Blazer, a legendary author who is significantly older than she is. Their relationship occurs in fits and starts, as Blazer does everything he can to ensure Alice doesn't become too attached, and in a small way, ensure he doesn't become too dependent on her. As the novella explores Alice's life both with and without Blazer, it also explores the writing process, and how what we read has an influence on what we write, and how we see.
"Madness" follows Amar, an Iraqi-American man who is detained at Heathrow while on the way to visit his brother in Kurdistan. The novella juxtaposes his interrogation, as he tries to make sense of why he is being detained beyond his heritage, and his experiences the last time he and his family visited Iraq. It also provided commentary on identity, ambition, relationships, and the fraught environment of post-Saddam Iraq.
In the third, and shortest, novella, "Ezra Blazer's Desert Island Discs," Blazer returns to appear on the famed BBC radio program and shares his thoughts on which music he'd most want to have with him if stranded. Beyond a list of musical acts and their significance, Blazer shares some memories from his life which provide more insight into his character—and he flirts shamelessly with the program's host.
I believe Halliday really has some talent as a writer. There were a number of times I marveled at her language and imagery. I loved Alice's character in particular, and was fascinated by her relationship with Blazer. I'll admit that I felt a little gypped when her story ended and Amar's began. Amar's story was uneven—I definitely found the scenes with him being interrogated far more compelling than the rest of his rather disaffected life.
While this was an intriguing read, as I mentioned, I didn't see the thread that connected the novellas, so the book as a whole didn't work for me. This could work for others, however—I know a few people who thought it's one of the best books written thus far in 2018. Regardless of where you end up, Halliday is a talent worth watching.
See all of my reviews at itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com, or check out my list of the best books I read in 2017 at https://itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-best-books-i-read-in-2017.html.
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June 29, 2018I was so happy to get my hands on this book. Enjoyed and glad I read it.
January 3, 2018
There were things that I liked about this “novel “ in three parts. In the first part, “Folly”, I especially loved the literary references, the music, and I loved the baseball talk. Having lived in the Boston area I definitely understand the Red Sox - Yankees rivalry and we lived there in 2004 when they won the World Series. ( Go Sox! They are still my favorite team and even though I have moved back home to New York State.) At first I thought the relationship between Alice and Ezra, the writer who is a lot older than she is, sort of endearing, but my view changed later. At the end of this part, I was left invested in these characters wanting to know what would happen to them, individually and together.
Amar, an Iraqi America held at Heathrow Airport is the center of the second story, “Madness”, which I found was interesting and reflective of the immigrant experience and what it must have been like and certainly still is for those of Mid East descent post 9/11. While reading it, though I struggled to find connection with the first novella.
In the last part, Ezra Blazer’s Desert Island Discs”, an interview with the writer of the first novella, we get a hint, well more than a hint of how the first two parts might be connected. While I quite liked him in the first part, Ezra became for me a dirty old man with his reflection on his younger girlfriends as his children and as he tries to hit on the woman interviewing him
3 stars is all I can give it. I thought the book was written in a clever way and it’s a lot about the form, commentary in a way on writing. It was just too clever for my liking . There are a number of highly rated reviews that might shed some light on further thematic connections that didn’t stand out to me. I recommend reading those. In spite of my mixed feelings on this, I will still look to see what this author may write in the future.
This was another monthly read with my two of my book BFFs , Diane and Esil and as always fun to get their perspective as we read together.
I received an advanced copy of this book from Simons and Schuster through Edelweiss.
Amar, an Iraqi America held at Heathrow Airport is the center of the second story, “Madness”, which I found was interesting and reflective of the immigrant experience and what it must have been like and certainly still is for those of Mid East descent post 9/11. While reading it, though I struggled to find connection with the first novella.
In the last part, Ezra Blazer’s Desert Island Discs”, an interview with the writer of the first novella, we get a hint, well more than a hint of how the first two parts might be connected. While I quite liked him in the first part, Ezra became for me a dirty old man with his reflection on his younger girlfriends as his children and as he tries to hit on the woman interviewing him
3 stars is all I can give it. I thought the book was written in a clever way and it’s a lot about the form, commentary in a way on writing. It was just too clever for my liking . There are a number of highly rated reviews that might shed some light on further thematic connections that didn’t stand out to me. I recommend reading those. In spite of my mixed feelings on this, I will still look to see what this author may write in the future.
This was another monthly read with my two of my book BFFs , Diane and Esil and as always fun to get their perspective as we read together.
I received an advanced copy of this book from Simons and Schuster through Edelweiss.
January 4, 2018
3.5 I did not feel an emotional connection to this book, but I did find it intellectually stimulating. Something very different, very original and elegantly conceived. Two novellas, which are written very differently, the first a famous author, an older man, already successful, his life near the end. A younger woman, Alice, in her late twenties, an editor, still trying to find herself, her life just beginning to unfold. They have an affair, and keep in mind the title, it is very fitting, their she's and life experiences do not match, but they both love baseball, though different teams, it is a common denominator in their relationship. Many quotes from different literary novels, fill these pages. Love and art.
The second novel takes a different turn, seems totally unrelated, though there are some common denominators. Alice and the looking glass, a mirror by which one sees oneself. But how do these connect? The third is an interview, the interviewee Ezra and it is here we find the connection, though one is never write sure if they are putting this together correctly. I liked the challenge of this. All sections are wonderfully written, the prose quite brilliantly conceived. Every once in a while I find it stimulating to read a book where one has to think, where everything is not apparent. That was this book.
Of course it helped immeasurably to read this with my two amazing reading buddies, Esil and Angela, though our rating varied somewhat with this one. It was nice to have others to bounce ideas and thoughts off of, see if we were all putting this together the same. I think that like Ali Smith, and her writing, this is challenging but worthwhile. The funny thing is that if sometimes I feel frustrated with these novels, not sure where they are going, I also find that these are the novels that linger, that provoke new thoughts, new meanings, even the day after one has finished.
ARC from Edelweiss.
The second novel takes a different turn, seems totally unrelated, though there are some common denominators. Alice and the looking glass, a mirror by which one sees oneself. But how do these connect? The third is an interview, the interviewee Ezra and it is here we find the connection, though one is never write sure if they are putting this together correctly. I liked the challenge of this. All sections are wonderfully written, the prose quite brilliantly conceived. Every once in a while I find it stimulating to read a book where one has to think, where everything is not apparent. That was this book.
Of course it helped immeasurably to read this with my two amazing reading buddies, Esil and Angela, though our rating varied somewhat with this one. It was nice to have others to bounce ideas and thoughts off of, see if we were all putting this together the same. I think that like Ali Smith, and her writing, this is challenging but worthwhile. The funny thing is that if sometimes I feel frustrated with these novels, not sure where they are going, I also find that these are the novels that linger, that provoke new thoughts, new meanings, even the day after one has finished.
ARC from Edelweiss.
January 4, 2018
3.5 stars, although my thoughts on this one are a bit asymmetrical.
It’s a book of themes, with asymmetry as the centerpiece. It’s broken into three parts of uneven length, tenuously connected to each other. The first part features an asymmetrical relationship between the narrator, a young woman named Mary Alice, and an aging famous writer. The second part is told from the perspective of an Iraqi American man, flitting back and forth in time and place, but always coming back to his detention in a UK airport. And the third part is very brief and in the form of a radio interview with the famous writer from the first part.
It’s a book of many literary and musical references, with Alice in Wonderland as a clear centrepiece. Does Alice fall through the rabbit hole when she meets the famous author in Central Park? Is the middle section Alice’s dream? Is the interview Alice waking up? Perhaps…
It’s well written. It’s tremendously suggestive. It’s a bit creepy. It aims to shock a bit, but not too much. I loved it in parts, but at times I felt a bit too lost and disoriented – much as Alice…
As I write my review, I realize how clever Asymmetry is. But that doesn’t detract from the fact that this was a mixed reading experience. I suspect that some will love it and some will hate it, and others like me will wake up feeling a bit disoriented, trying to figure out what just happened.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read an advance copy. And thank you to my lovely buddy readers, Angela and Diane -- I was certainly grateful to have both of you reading this one along with me.
It’s a book of themes, with asymmetry as the centerpiece. It’s broken into three parts of uneven length, tenuously connected to each other. The first part features an asymmetrical relationship between the narrator, a young woman named Mary Alice, and an aging famous writer. The second part is told from the perspective of an Iraqi American man, flitting back and forth in time and place, but always coming back to his detention in a UK airport. And the third part is very brief and in the form of a radio interview with the famous writer from the first part.
It’s a book of many literary and musical references, with Alice in Wonderland as a clear centrepiece. Does Alice fall through the rabbit hole when she meets the famous author in Central Park? Is the middle section Alice’s dream? Is the interview Alice waking up? Perhaps…
It’s well written. It’s tremendously suggestive. It’s a bit creepy. It aims to shock a bit, but not too much. I loved it in parts, but at times I felt a bit too lost and disoriented – much as Alice…
As I write my review, I realize how clever Asymmetry is. But that doesn’t detract from the fact that this was a mixed reading experience. I suspect that some will love it and some will hate it, and others like me will wake up feeling a bit disoriented, trying to figure out what just happened.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read an advance copy. And thank you to my lovely buddy readers, Angela and Diane -- I was certainly grateful to have both of you reading this one along with me.
December 11, 2018
I know what I'm supposed to experience with this book, and it was this promise that forced me through to the end (I was stalled at 42% for a while, choosing to read other books):
"These two seemingly disparate stories gain resonance as their perspectives interact and overlap, with yet new implications for their relationship revealed in an unexpected coda."
There are two major stories, one with a young woman in an inexplicable relationship with an older writer. I've seen other reviews refer to it as tender and/or funny, but I found it to be rather cold and emotionless.
I liked the second story, about the Iraqi man stopped at the UK customs interrogation office (not its official name.) It is evenly told, through interviews and back story.
But this promised payoff of overlap and new implications in an unexpected coda? I would need someone to hold my head and point to where. I don't see it at all. The coda connected to the first story, sure, but....
I should say that this book may appeal to people who have been enjoying Ali Smith's season novels. I find them to have more heart, but the fragmented style is somewhat similar. I'm not sure this worked for me the way her novels do. I will say your mileage may vary, and that I did not care for it.
Thanks to the publisher for providing early access to the title in exchange for an honest review. It comes out February 6, 2018.
"These two seemingly disparate stories gain resonance as their perspectives interact and overlap, with yet new implications for their relationship revealed in an unexpected coda."
There are two major stories, one with a young woman in an inexplicable relationship with an older writer. I've seen other reviews refer to it as tender and/or funny, but I found it to be rather cold and emotionless.
I liked the second story, about the Iraqi man stopped at the UK customs interrogation office (not its official name.) It is evenly told, through interviews and back story.
But this promised payoff of overlap and new implications in an unexpected coda? I would need someone to hold my head and point to where. I don't see it at all. The coda connected to the first story, sure, but....
I should say that this book may appeal to people who have been enjoying Ali Smith's season novels. I find them to have more heart, but the fragmented style is somewhat similar. I'm not sure this worked for me the way her novels do. I will say your mileage may vary, and that I did not care for it.
Thanks to the publisher for providing early access to the title in exchange for an honest review. It comes out February 6, 2018.
March 19, 2018
Library Overdrive - spontaneous- ‘available’ download.
This is one of those books I had seen around - but couldn’t remember reading anything about it. So- while out walking - with no reviews in front of me - I took it for a test run and liked the beginning right away.,
It started off with a BANG....( kinda creepy)...but totally addicting. I mean - would you like knowing your daughter was having an affair with an old Jewish geezer? Me either ....but it made for a good story - and Ezra ( old geezer/ author)- gave Alice yummy cookies - ice cream cones - told her Jewish jokes - and even money to buy herself a new air conditioning unit for her apt. Alice made him feel ‘good’ —-like a young geezer. Laughing- yet?
I couldn’t help but think about Joyce Maynard and J D Salinger. ( hmmmm- this story sounded like theirs).....haha!
So, as I was saying, The audiobook *BEGINNING* WAS GREAT....creepy - ‘young girl with an old man affair’, engaging story-GREAT!!
but then.....
I was lost... what was going on? Where did Alice go? What’s going on?
Ohhhhh.....A NEW STORY. ( silly me).... it’s a NEW story about a guy named Amar stuck at the London airport —we discover why- who - what - and the details about the son of an immigrant Iraqi Family - on his way to see his brother - and stories of his life in America and Iraq.
Then we have a third story which ties story 1 & 2 together....kinda? —- Ezra ( old geezer/author) —is being interviewed about his love of music and women.
The writing - and dialogue stand out - and the AUDIOBOOK NARRATOR IS TERRIFIC.
It didn’t all make sense to me - but I was intrigued - and enjoyed it for its creative asymmetry.
3.5 rounding up for creativity.......plus, much was very enjoyable!
This is one of those books I had seen around - but couldn’t remember reading anything about it. So- while out walking - with no reviews in front of me - I took it for a test run and liked the beginning right away.,
It started off with a BANG....( kinda creepy)...but totally addicting. I mean - would you like knowing your daughter was having an affair with an old Jewish geezer? Me either ....but it made for a good story - and Ezra ( old geezer/ author)- gave Alice yummy cookies - ice cream cones - told her Jewish jokes - and even money to buy herself a new air conditioning unit for her apt. Alice made him feel ‘good’ —-like a young geezer. Laughing- yet?
I couldn’t help but think about Joyce Maynard and J D Salinger. ( hmmmm- this story sounded like theirs).....haha!
So, as I was saying, The audiobook *BEGINNING* WAS GREAT....creepy - ‘young girl with an old man affair’, engaging story-GREAT!!
but then.....
I was lost... what was going on? Where did Alice go? What’s going on?
Ohhhhh.....A NEW STORY. ( silly me).... it’s a NEW story about a guy named Amar stuck at the London airport —we discover why- who - what - and the details about the son of an immigrant Iraqi Family - on his way to see his brother - and stories of his life in America and Iraq.
Then we have a third story which ties story 1 & 2 together....kinda? —- Ezra ( old geezer/author) —is being interviewed about his love of music and women.
The writing - and dialogue stand out - and the AUDIOBOOK NARRATOR IS TERRIFIC.
It didn’t all make sense to me - but I was intrigued - and enjoyed it for its creative asymmetry.
3.5 rounding up for creativity.......plus, much was very enjoyable!
October 22, 2018
Really good, interesting book whose structural ambitions are partly disguised by the directness of its prose. This is functionally two novellas and then a short transcript, (one that works a bit too hard to round off the novel). Part one, which I really liked, tells the story of Alice’s relationship with Ezra Blazer, who the book makes clear is an analogue for Philip Roth. That Lisa Halliday did have a relationship with Roth when she was in her twenties and he in his sixties adds a voyerustic thrill here. All along, she is collecting small bits of data for the second novella, which the book makes plain that she is writing (though it doesn’t seem to know that we know that). This tells the story of Amar, a US/Iraqi dual citizen detained in Heathrow.
The canny thing with this structure is that the shortcomings of the second novella can be ascribed to Alice, not Halliday. But let’s try to cut through that. Amar’s story is unusually lacking in physical sensation, as if Halliday’s care in writing a character whose identity is so other than herself went too far. One feels the author a bit on tip-toes here, delivering many local details of Iraq but never inhabiting the body of her lead. In contrast with Alice’s urgent, physical (a broken wrist, an unwanted pregnancy) plot This results in a slightly anodyne quality.
The first half of this book, then, is what people will remember. All the formal ambition of the second half is wonderful to think of and admirable, but the indelible quality of the work comes when it is at its most urgent. If the Alice and Amar sections had been threaded, so they developed in tandem, I think it would have been a knockout, and I wouldn’t have noticed myself growing a bit impatient with the action.
4.5 Stars + 2.5 Stars, divided by two, then rounded up.
The canny thing with this structure is that the shortcomings of the second novella can be ascribed to Alice, not Halliday. But let’s try to cut through that. Amar’s story is unusually lacking in physical sensation, as if Halliday’s care in writing a character whose identity is so other than herself went too far. One feels the author a bit on tip-toes here, delivering many local details of Iraq but never inhabiting the body of her lead. In contrast with Alice’s urgent, physical (a broken wrist, an unwanted pregnancy) plot This results in a slightly anodyne quality.
The first half of this book, then, is what people will remember. All the formal ambition of the second half is wonderful to think of and admirable, but the indelible quality of the work comes when it is at its most urgent. If the Alice and Amar sections had been threaded, so they developed in tandem, I think it would have been a knockout, and I wouldn’t have noticed myself growing a bit impatient with the action.
4.5 Stars + 2.5 Stars, divided by two, then rounded up.
February 21, 2022
No lame summary can possibly prepare you for the deep narrative pleasures this book serves up.
Part 1: FOLLY is set in Upper West Side (Manhattan). It’s the touching and at times hilarious story of a February-December romance, if we can call it that, between a writer of literary fiction in his seventies (think Philip Roth) and a 25-year-old woman just starting out in publishing.
Generally I abhor love stories. But the dynamic between this young woman and this old man is gripping. The sex, most of it, happily, takes place off stage. We’re beguiled by the immense quirkiness of their affection for one another. He plays old music, shows her which books to read, what films to see. There doesn’t seem to be anyone else around who might inform her of these things. Here’s the writer, Ezra, after an amusing comment from his lover:
“Oh, Mary-Alice,” he laughed, wiping an eye and reeling her in to kiss her fingers. “My darling, funny, cuckoo Mary Alice! I’m afraid you’re going to be very lonely in life.” (p. 66)
Admirable use of place names—Ronkonkoma—beautifully spare prose. Now Ezra’s declining. Sex is out. He gets a pacemaker. The years pass. She stays at his Hamptons house, at his place on the UWS. They enjoy an occasional drop. He turns her into a Red Sox fan. Later she keeps him apprised of the standings. They listen to The Great American Songbook on the radio. (This is pre-HDTV, pre-iPhone.)
Anyway the book has a kind of funny jump-cutty narrative propulsion, especially Part 1. Like Jean Luc-Godard’s Breathless. I haven’t come across anything quite like it before. Also, the author catches the weird manic joy of the city, I think, perfectly.
Part 2: MADNESS is a novella written by Mary-Alice about an Iraqi-American family during the American-led debacle in Iraq.
Part 3 is called EZRA BLAZER’S DESERT ISLAND DISCS. The New York Times said this ending is “both astonishing and retrospectively inevitable.” I have no idea what that means.
Please read it.
Part 1: FOLLY is set in Upper West Side (Manhattan). It’s the touching and at times hilarious story of a February-December romance, if we can call it that, between a writer of literary fiction in his seventies (think Philip Roth) and a 25-year-old woman just starting out in publishing.
Generally I abhor love stories. But the dynamic between this young woman and this old man is gripping. The sex, most of it, happily, takes place off stage. We’re beguiled by the immense quirkiness of their affection for one another. He plays old music, shows her which books to read, what films to see. There doesn’t seem to be anyone else around who might inform her of these things. Here’s the writer, Ezra, after an amusing comment from his lover:
“Oh, Mary-Alice,” he laughed, wiping an eye and reeling her in to kiss her fingers. “My darling, funny, cuckoo Mary Alice! I’m afraid you’re going to be very lonely in life.” (p. 66)
Admirable use of place names—Ronkonkoma—beautifully spare prose. Now Ezra’s declining. Sex is out. He gets a pacemaker. The years pass. She stays at his Hamptons house, at his place on the UWS. They enjoy an occasional drop. He turns her into a Red Sox fan. Later she keeps him apprised of the standings. They listen to The Great American Songbook on the radio. (This is pre-HDTV, pre-iPhone.)
Anyway the book has a kind of funny jump-cutty narrative propulsion, especially Part 1. Like Jean Luc-Godard’s Breathless. I haven’t come across anything quite like it before. Also, the author catches the weird manic joy of the city, I think, perfectly.
Part 2: MADNESS is a novella written by Mary-Alice about an Iraqi-American family during the American-led debacle in Iraq.
Part 3 is called EZRA BLAZER’S DESERT ISLAND DISCS. The New York Times said this ending is “both astonishing and retrospectively inevitable.” I have no idea what that means.
Please read it.
November 28, 2019
For her part, Alice was starting to consider really rather seriously whether a former choirgirl from Massachusetts might be capable of conjuring the consciousness of a Muslim man.
“Great American Novel” =”doorstop of a book, usually pretentious, written by a man.”
Lionel Shriver (Independent 2010)
I suspect, even in January, the oddest book I will read this year as I don’t quite get what the author is achieving other than annoying her readers. It essentially consists of two – I sincerely hope deliberately – badly written pastiche novellas, with a final coda that hints at some deep literary links between them.
But it is a novel I suspect I may end up discussing more than any other, as the critics so far seem to have been infected by a classic case of emperor's new clothes, asserting the subtlety of the novel because the novel appears lacking in any obvious merit.
The first novella takes the worst of the various attempts at the Great American Novel from the last decades ranging from Roth (particularly Roth) and Bellow through Lethem, De Lillo and Franzen, to recent awful efforts by Hill (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), Auster (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) and Lerner (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) and turns them into a combined sexually creepy, self-satisfied, baseball obsessed, tonally annoying narrative of an affair between the elderly Pulizter Prize winning novelist, and elderly Ezra Blaze and the many-decades-younger publishing assistant and aspiring writer Alice.
Done as a half page Digested Read by John Crace in the Guardian this would have been a quite fun take-down but stretched over c140 pages it is excruciating to read.
And bizarrely it is actually part autobiographical - as a 20-something literary agent, Lisa Halliday did apparently have a romantic relationship with Philip Roth. (See: https://www.wsj.com/articles/fiction-...)
The second is very different in form and content but equally unappealing. It uses the framing device of an American-Iraqi citizen, en route between the two counties, detained in immigration in LHR, a device done much better elsewhere (Home Fire, most obviously), to present a completely didactic and uninformative account of his life and that of his family, part in the US part in Iraq, throughout the two Gulf Wars and their aftermath.
At one point we are introduced to his Uncle who one suspects would have written the sort of novel I would love to have read – Mattias Enard’s wonderful Compass being an obvious and shining example. When you ask his Uncle an apparently simple question he responds:
Aaaahhh, yes, now that is an excellent question, and there is an amazing story behind the answer. Following which you could expect a forty-five-minute disquisition that would begin directly related to your query but then spiral outward to include anecdotes and observations regarding many other intriguing if not entirely innocuous matters as well. Thus in our three hours switchbacking up Goizha we discussed Aristotle, Lamarck, Debussy, Zoroastrianism, Abu Ghraib, Hannah Arendt, and the asyet-unknown contingencies of de-Ba’athification, Hassan managing even with respect to the more sobering of these topics to display a certain philosophical resilience.
Unfortunately what we instead get is hinted at in another exchange:
This is because politics in imaginative work is like a shot in the middle of a concert. The noise is deafening but it imparts no energy. It doesn’t harmonize with the sound of any other instrument.
Again the intention seems to be to show how these sort of novels can be done badly – here by those with little real understanding of the situation about which they are writing.
The last section was at least mercifully brief.
In a highly fantastical twist, the Roth-stand-in author has been awarded the Nobel Prize ‘for his exuberant ingenuity and exquisite powers of ventriloquism, which with irony and compassion evince the extraordinary heterogeneity of modern American life’ – fortunately the Nobel Committee have rather better taste (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) at least under their previous secretary Horace Engdahl who told the Associated Press in 2008:
“The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don’t translate enough and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature. That ignorance is restraining."
The format here is a transcript of his appearance on Desert Island Discs and as he rambles on, demonstrates his cultural ignorance and arrogance and - again very creepingly in the era of #metoo - attempts to seduce Sue Lawley, he hints at connections between the stories.
For balance and reviews that got rather more out of the book than I did, see those from Gumble’s Yard and Neil, although it is rather interesting to note one common thread in their comments:
“I enjoyed much more after I finished and reflected on it than when I was reading it”
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
“A fascinating book that is almost more enjoyable on reflection than it is during reading”.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Perhaps I would get more on reflection on the novel, but to be frank I don’t think it justifies the effort given I wasted enough of my time reading it. Indeed from the press reviews now appearing, critics seem to be desperately striving to see things that aren't there and praise the book's flaws as deliberate genius. E.g. this review (http://www.full-stop.net/2018/02/15/r...) contains the line:
Or from the Atlantic (https://www.theatlantic.com/entertain...
A novel I rather fear may reappear in award season given its artistic inclination and the collective madness that has befallen the newspaper critics, but if it does I would suggest interest readers simply sample a page of each of the first two parts, take on trust that they continue in that vein, and simply read the coda.
Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the ARC.
“Great American Novel” =”doorstop of a book, usually pretentious, written by a man.”
Lionel Shriver (Independent 2010)
I suspect, even in January, the oddest book I will read this year as I don’t quite get what the author is achieving other than annoying her readers. It essentially consists of two – I sincerely hope deliberately – badly written pastiche novellas, with a final coda that hints at some deep literary links between them.
But it is a novel I suspect I may end up discussing more than any other, as the critics so far seem to have been infected by a classic case of emperor's new clothes, asserting the subtlety of the novel because the novel appears lacking in any obvious merit.
The first novella takes the worst of the various attempts at the Great American Novel from the last decades ranging from Roth (particularly Roth) and Bellow through Lethem, De Lillo and Franzen, to recent awful efforts by Hill (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), Auster (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) and Lerner (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) and turns them into a combined sexually creepy, self-satisfied, baseball obsessed, tonally annoying narrative of an affair between the elderly Pulizter Prize winning novelist, and elderly Ezra Blaze and the many-decades-younger publishing assistant and aspiring writer Alice.
Done as a half page Digested Read by John Crace in the Guardian this would have been a quite fun take-down but stretched over c140 pages it is excruciating to read.
And bizarrely it is actually part autobiographical - as a 20-something literary agent, Lisa Halliday did apparently have a romantic relationship with Philip Roth. (See: https://www.wsj.com/articles/fiction-...)
The second is very different in form and content but equally unappealing. It uses the framing device of an American-Iraqi citizen, en route between the two counties, detained in immigration in LHR, a device done much better elsewhere (Home Fire, most obviously), to present a completely didactic and uninformative account of his life and that of his family, part in the US part in Iraq, throughout the two Gulf Wars and their aftermath.
At one point we are introduced to his Uncle who one suspects would have written the sort of novel I would love to have read – Mattias Enard’s wonderful Compass being an obvious and shining example. When you ask his Uncle an apparently simple question he responds:
Aaaahhh, yes, now that is an excellent question, and there is an amazing story behind the answer. Following which you could expect a forty-five-minute disquisition that would begin directly related to your query but then spiral outward to include anecdotes and observations regarding many other intriguing if not entirely innocuous matters as well. Thus in our three hours switchbacking up Goizha we discussed Aristotle, Lamarck, Debussy, Zoroastrianism, Abu Ghraib, Hannah Arendt, and the asyet-unknown contingencies of de-Ba’athification, Hassan managing even with respect to the more sobering of these topics to display a certain philosophical resilience.
Unfortunately what we instead get is hinted at in another exchange:
This is because politics in imaginative work is like a shot in the middle of a concert. The noise is deafening but it imparts no energy. It doesn’t harmonize with the sound of any other instrument.
Again the intention seems to be to show how these sort of novels can be done badly – here by those with little real understanding of the situation about which they are writing.
The last section was at least mercifully brief.
In a highly fantastical twist, the Roth-stand-in author has been awarded the Nobel Prize ‘for his exuberant ingenuity and exquisite powers of ventriloquism, which with irony and compassion evince the extraordinary heterogeneity of modern American life’ – fortunately the Nobel Committee have rather better taste (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) at least under their previous secretary Horace Engdahl who told the Associated Press in 2008:
“The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don’t translate enough and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature. That ignorance is restraining."
The format here is a transcript of his appearance on Desert Island Discs and as he rambles on, demonstrates his cultural ignorance and arrogance and - again very creepingly in the era of #metoo - attempts to seduce Sue Lawley, he hints at connections between the stories.
For balance and reviews that got rather more out of the book than I did, see those from Gumble’s Yard and Neil, although it is rather interesting to note one common thread in their comments:
“I enjoyed much more after I finished and reflected on it than when I was reading it”
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
“A fascinating book that is almost more enjoyable on reflection than it is during reading”.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Perhaps I would get more on reflection on the novel, but to be frank I don’t think it justifies the effort given I wasted enough of my time reading it. Indeed from the press reviews now appearing, critics seem to be desperately striving to see things that aren't there and praise the book's flaws as deliberate genius. E.g. this review (http://www.full-stop.net/2018/02/15/r...) contains the line:
if Amar’s story feels just a bit off — too written and perhaps too well-written, his midair birth too melodramatic — we could understand that to be Alice’s novelistic failing, not Halliday’s, or we could understand it to be an intentional jab at the arbitrariness of what we accept as fiction in a world of outrageous facts and “facts.”Or in other words 'the 2nd story may be badly written but that is a clever meta-fictional artistic take on the difficulties of writing good fiction'.
Or from the Atlantic (https://www.theatlantic.com/entertain...
Halliday incorporates big chunks of quotation from these Great Books (Camus, Twain, Primo Levi), as if to suggest how their voices are usurping Alice’s own.Or perhaps, more simply, the author wants to pad out the book with some decent writing.
A novel I rather fear may reappear in award season given its artistic inclination and the collective madness that has befallen the newspaper critics, but if it does I would suggest interest readers simply sample a page of each of the first two parts, take on trust that they continue in that vein, and simply read the coda.
Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the ARC.
June 3, 2023
Three stories – well two really, one being told in two parts.
1. A young female editor has a sexual relationship with an eminent, ageing writer. We are told little of the woman other than that we directly observe. What we observe is that she seems rather naive and lonely and does little other than meet with the writer, receiving random (and sometimes slightly strange) gifts, and that she also has occasional interactions with an elderly woman who lives in a separate flat in her building. The relationship with the writer does seem to satisfy her even though he’s prone to passing her off to others as anything but his lover. Their discussions are mainly about literature and baseball. The text is interspersed with extracts from various novels.
2. A young man is stranded at a London Airport whilst en route to meet up with his brother in Kurdistan. He has been picked out by officers from Passport Control and is asked questions about his background and his planned journey. We learn that he intended to stop in London for a couple of days to meet with another man before flying on to his final destination. The traveller is an economist and he holds both an American and an Iraqi passport. In flashback, we get to know more of his life in America and also of his time spend in Iraq.
3. The final section picks up the writer from story 1 again. Some years have passed and this time he’s being interviewed for the BBC radio programme Desert Island Discs. In the course of the interview he makes a clumsy but overt pass at the programmes presenter.
The writing here is to be admired: it’s clever, sad and sometimes funny – but always engaging. Story 2 is written in a very different style to the others, but all three sections grabbed me. We are told that the final story is the coda that unites the first two pieces, but this is far from obvious to me. In thinking back on the stories there are certainly some common themes – insecurity and death, for example – but the onus is very much on the reader to draw these out from the text. When I came to the end I was temporarily at a loss: what had I just read and what did it all mean? In truth, I’m still not sure I’ve worked it out.
My thanks to Granta Publications and NetGalley for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
1. A young female editor has a sexual relationship with an eminent, ageing writer. We are told little of the woman other than that we directly observe. What we observe is that she seems rather naive and lonely and does little other than meet with the writer, receiving random (and sometimes slightly strange) gifts, and that she also has occasional interactions with an elderly woman who lives in a separate flat in her building. The relationship with the writer does seem to satisfy her even though he’s prone to passing her off to others as anything but his lover. Their discussions are mainly about literature and baseball. The text is interspersed with extracts from various novels.
2. A young man is stranded at a London Airport whilst en route to meet up with his brother in Kurdistan. He has been picked out by officers from Passport Control and is asked questions about his background and his planned journey. We learn that he intended to stop in London for a couple of days to meet with another man before flying on to his final destination. The traveller is an economist and he holds both an American and an Iraqi passport. In flashback, we get to know more of his life in America and also of his time spend in Iraq.
3. The final section picks up the writer from story 1 again. Some years have passed and this time he’s being interviewed for the BBC radio programme Desert Island Discs. In the course of the interview he makes a clumsy but overt pass at the programmes presenter.
The writing here is to be admired: it’s clever, sad and sometimes funny – but always engaging. Story 2 is written in a very different style to the others, but all three sections grabbed me. We are told that the final story is the coda that unites the first two pieces, but this is far from obvious to me. In thinking back on the stories there are certainly some common themes – insecurity and death, for example – but the onus is very much on the reader to draw these out from the text. When I came to the end I was temporarily at a loss: what had I just read and what did it all mean? In truth, I’m still not sure I’ve worked it out.
My thanks to Granta Publications and NetGalley for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
December 13, 2018
Nope, not for me I'm afraid. Asymmetry is more of an experiment than a novel, and an experiment that didn't warrant half as much tedium as what I found myself subjected to. I 'got it' but I didn't find the payoff rewarding at all. There's a good argument to be made that the first two sections were badly written on purpose (once you figure out from the third section the thread that connects the two disparate stories) but if poorly executed structural innovation is all it takes for a book to be lauded as a masterpiece these days I think we need to raise that bar just a little bit higher.
February 8, 2019
Lisa Halliday is one clever writer – clever in different ways, including a sneaky one. I ended up liking this quite a lot. My full appreciation came in the short, final section of its three-part narrative where Ezra, the mature, award-winning writer was being interviewed on a radio show talking about his top ten desert island song list. He mentioned something that shed light on both the preceding parts and gave new meaning to the title.
The final asymmetry would be spoiled by mentioning it. The first is not. In part one, young Alice, a junior editor in New York, has an affair with Ezra, who has just enough charm, wit, and wisdom not to seem creepy in the role of older inamorato. Halliday must have taken the “write what you know” advice to heart since she had had a relationship in her own youth with Phillip Roth. She didn’t follow this counsel throughout, though, since the second part of the book was narrated by an Iraqi-American student of economics. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Back to Alice. I thought she came off initially as kind of a ditz. For example, despite her job at a literary publishing house, she didn’t know that “Camus” ended with a cow sound. She seemed unfocused as well. Was this Alice a bit incautious plunging down the rabbit hole? Regardless, she grew on me. For one thing, I can relate to anyone who can be plied by books, baseball, and dessert. She was brighter than I had given her credit for, too, with eyes open wide enough as she peered into the looking glass. More importantly, she turned out to be one of those cherished empathy engines that great fiction can provide.
Part 2 presented asymmetries of a different kind. The cultural influences in Los Angeles, where the narrator, Amar, was a doctoral student, and those in Iraq, his native land, don't exactly bring symmetry to mind. His Muslim faith put him further out of step with his American peers who were Christians or atheists. Amar was detained by immigration officials at Heathrow on his way to see his brother in Kurdistan. The story of Amar, his family, and friends (including girlfriends) was back-filled skillfully from there. A post-9/11 mindset comes into play, naturally, but other conflicts feature as well.
One of the things I thought the book did particularly well was to examine certain of these asymmetries to see how their imbalances can be reconciled or at least comprehended. Greater harmony could take place at an individual level or a societal one. Here’s a quote from the book that speaks to that:
This line from Amar’s journalist friend gets at asymmetries in a different way, by saying how wrong we may be to judge or prescribe without understanding how complicated the issues often are:
Even metaphysical asymmetries can be distilled to a point where the distinctions are not great. Take this exchange between Amar, the believer, and an agnostic counterpart:
If we define God in very abstract terms as the causal singularity explaining the universe, the bringer of the Big Bang, that’s a lot like the non-believer’s unnamed and unknowable reason we have existence rather than nothingness. Of course, believers tend to add specifics to their brand of Godliness that do more to separate than to find common ground. Halliday didn’t have as much to say about those more detailed aspects of faith.
The third part where Ezra talked about his musical preferences was engaging at several levels. First of all, it made me wish I had access to BBC radio for actual broadcasts of Desert Island Discs. It seems like a great format, where a celebrity like Ezra (only real) gives reasons for his choices and then they play the songs. This imagined scene gave Halliday another chance to show Ezra as sophisticated, funny, and somewhat sympathetic (with one OTT exception involving the host). Finally, at a structural level, it allowed her to tie everything together with a very nice bow.
I think what impressed me most about this debut effort was the intelligence of her insights and the respect she showed for her characters. The writing was solid, too -- literary without trying too hard, modern in a way that didn't feel contrived. It’s also fair to say that titles rarely make you think as much as this one does about the reasons they apply. I’d have said the same thing had she called the book Perspectives. I go for the broad ones like hers.
The final asymmetry would be spoiled by mentioning it. The first is not. In part one, young Alice, a junior editor in New York, has an affair with Ezra, who has just enough charm, wit, and wisdom not to seem creepy in the role of older inamorato. Halliday must have taken the “write what you know” advice to heart since she had had a relationship in her own youth with Phillip Roth. She didn’t follow this counsel throughout, though, since the second part of the book was narrated by an Iraqi-American student of economics. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Back to Alice. I thought she came off initially as kind of a ditz. For example, despite her job at a literary publishing house, she didn’t know that “Camus” ended with a cow sound. She seemed unfocused as well. Was this Alice a bit incautious plunging down the rabbit hole? Regardless, she grew on me. For one thing, I can relate to anyone who can be plied by books, baseball, and dessert. She was brighter than I had given her credit for, too, with eyes open wide enough as she peered into the looking glass. More importantly, she turned out to be one of those cherished empathy engines that great fiction can provide.
Part 2 presented asymmetries of a different kind. The cultural influences in Los Angeles, where the narrator, Amar, was a doctoral student, and those in Iraq, his native land, don't exactly bring symmetry to mind. His Muslim faith put him further out of step with his American peers who were Christians or atheists. Amar was detained by immigration officials at Heathrow on his way to see his brother in Kurdistan. The story of Amar, his family, and friends (including girlfriends) was back-filled skillfully from there. A post-9/11 mindset comes into play, naturally, but other conflicts feature as well.
One of the things I thought the book did particularly well was to examine certain of these asymmetries to see how their imbalances can be reconciled or at least comprehended. Greater harmony could take place at an individual level or a societal one. Here’s a quote from the book that speaks to that:
And one must take into account a definite cushioning effect exercised both by the law, and by the moral sense which constitutes a self-imposed law; for a country is considered the more civilized the more the wisdom and efficiency of its laws hinder a weak man from becoming too weak or a powerful one too powerful.
This line from Amar’s journalist friend gets at asymmetries in a different way, by saying how wrong we may be to judge or prescribe without understanding how complicated the issues often are:
There’s an old saying, he said, about how the foreign journalist who travels to the Middle East and stays a week goes home to write a book in which he presents a pat solution to all of its problems. If he stays a month, he writes a magazine or a newspaper article filled with ‘ifs,’ ‘buts,’ and ‘on the other hands.’ If he stays a year, he writes nothing at all.
Even metaphysical asymmetries can be distilled to a point where the distinctions are not great. Take this exchange between Amar, the believer, and an agnostic counterpart:
But religion, our guest insisted with impressive confidence, allows you to ask only so many questions before you get to: Just because.
You have to have faith. Well, I said. Your problem with religion is virtually every faithless person’s problem with religion: that it offers irreducible answers. But some questions in the end simply aren’t empirically verifiable.
The whole point of faith is that irreducible answers don’t bother the faithful. The faithful take comfort and even pride in the knowledge that they have the strength to make the irreducible answers sincerely their own, as difficult as that is to do. Everyone—irreligious people included—relies on irreducible answers every day. All religion really does is to be honest about this, by giving the reliance a specific name: faith.
If we define God in very abstract terms as the causal singularity explaining the universe, the bringer of the Big Bang, that’s a lot like the non-believer’s unnamed and unknowable reason we have existence rather than nothingness. Of course, believers tend to add specifics to their brand of Godliness that do more to separate than to find common ground. Halliday didn’t have as much to say about those more detailed aspects of faith.
The third part where Ezra talked about his musical preferences was engaging at several levels. First of all, it made me wish I had access to BBC radio for actual broadcasts of Desert Island Discs. It seems like a great format, where a celebrity like Ezra (only real) gives reasons for his choices and then they play the songs. This imagined scene gave Halliday another chance to show Ezra as sophisticated, funny, and somewhat sympathetic (with one OTT exception involving the host). Finally, at a structural level, it allowed her to tie everything together with a very nice bow.
I think what impressed me most about this debut effort was the intelligence of her insights and the respect she showed for her characters. The writing was solid, too -- literary without trying too hard, modern in a way that didn't feel contrived. It’s also fair to say that titles rarely make you think as much as this one does about the reasons they apply. I’d have said the same thing had she called the book Perspectives. I go for the broad ones like hers.
November 20, 2020
The new global literature--of which many unsuspecting contemporary novels are part of--dictates that the more connections you make between time/place & a wholly different time/place, the less you know about everything. The more you know=the less you know. Because, really, what could be as disparate as the fates of two men, one Western the other from the East? Especially after the atrocious September 11th attacks (American literature can now be divided by pre- and post-911)--the color of your skin, your relationships and the way you traverse the world, your station in life, all of these became absolutely relevant. These details became titanic once you got on a plane; these little "details" came to a brusque forefront suddenly--your eyes burning as a result.
The secret to "Asymmetry" is the personality of the writer herself--her foibles, "poetics." This is fascinating! How could this woman write so sternly, so confidently, about two very different grown men. \One facing mortality; the other non-entity. & this is her Debut! "Asymmetry" is the literary equivalent of Babel.
The secret to "Asymmetry" is the personality of the writer herself--her foibles, "poetics." This is fascinating! How could this woman write so sternly, so confidently, about two very different grown men. \One facing mortality; the other non-entity. & this is her Debut! "Asymmetry" is the literary equivalent of Babel.
March 6, 2018
There has been quite an amount of hype about this novel in recent weeks. From the reviews I skimmed, I gathered that it contained two seemingly unrelated stories, and then a coda which would shed light on how they are linked and magically uncover hidden depths that the reader hadn't previously considered. Count me in, I thought, this sounds fascinating.
The first story, Folly, tells of Alice, a twenty-something editor for a New York book publisher. One day she is approached by Ezra, a much older world-renowned author. A romance blossoms and despite the age difference, they seem to make each other happy, bonding over a mutual love of baseball and music. Alice is an aspiring writer and Ezra delights in giving her literary advice and instructing her what to read. But his health is failing and as the relationship progresses, Alice finds that she is becoming more of a carer than a lover. I enjoyed this section, even moreso when I learned that Lisa Halliday herself was once a young editor who had a fling with Philip Roth.
The second part, Madness, revolves around Amar, an Iraqi-American. He is being detained in Heathrow on a journey to visit his older brother Sami in the Middle East. During his long wait for clearance, he reflects on the choices that have brought him to this point in his life, and he worries about the safety of Sami in such a volatile region. I must admit that I struggled to make it through this section. Not only was the complete change of character and circumstance jarring, I felt entirely uninvolved and couldn't bring myself to care about the fate of Amar. But the whole time I was trying (and failing) to connect it to the first story, which is part of the fun I guess.
Finally I came to the coda, and I was excited to discover the key to unlocking the novel's treasure. It takes the form of a Desert Island Discs interview with Ezra, the writer from earlier in the book. A lively and revealing discussion ensues, which becomes a bit uncomfortable as Ezra makes awkward overtures toward the married host. And then he mentions that So that's the big reveal, and I have to say I was quite underwhelmed. And if I hadn't known to look out for it, I might have missed it entirely.
Kudos to Lisa Halliday for trying something different. She is undoubtedly a clever and astute writer, and I have to admire the audacity of attempting something like this in her debut novel. But it left me wondering about the point of it all. Is it a commentary on the purpose of fiction? Or is it just a bit too "meta" for its own good? All I know that the much anticipated conclusion left me disappointed, and for that reason Asymmetry felt like less than the sum of its parts.
The first story, Folly, tells of Alice, a twenty-something editor for a New York book publisher. One day she is approached by Ezra, a much older world-renowned author. A romance blossoms and despite the age difference, they seem to make each other happy, bonding over a mutual love of baseball and music. Alice is an aspiring writer and Ezra delights in giving her literary advice and instructing her what to read. But his health is failing and as the relationship progresses, Alice finds that she is becoming more of a carer than a lover. I enjoyed this section, even moreso when I learned that Lisa Halliday herself was once a young editor who had a fling with Philip Roth.
The second part, Madness, revolves around Amar, an Iraqi-American. He is being detained in Heathrow on a journey to visit his older brother Sami in the Middle East. During his long wait for clearance, he reflects on the choices that have brought him to this point in his life, and he worries about the safety of Sami in such a volatile region. I must admit that I struggled to make it through this section. Not only was the complete change of character and circumstance jarring, I felt entirely uninvolved and couldn't bring myself to care about the fate of Amar. But the whole time I was trying (and failing) to connect it to the first story, which is part of the fun I guess.
Finally I came to the coda, and I was excited to discover the key to unlocking the novel's treasure. It takes the form of a Desert Island Discs interview with Ezra, the writer from earlier in the book. A lively and revealing discussion ensues, which becomes a bit uncomfortable as Ezra makes awkward overtures toward the married host. And then he mentions that So that's the big reveal, and I have to say I was quite underwhelmed. And if I hadn't known to look out for it, I might have missed it entirely.
Kudos to Lisa Halliday for trying something different. She is undoubtedly a clever and astute writer, and I have to admire the audacity of attempting something like this in her debut novel. But it left me wondering about the point of it all. Is it a commentary on the purpose of fiction? Or is it just a bit too "meta" for its own good? All I know that the much anticipated conclusion left me disappointed, and for that reason Asymmetry felt like less than the sum of its parts.
Shelved as 'dnf'
January 16, 2018I can already tell that this book just isn't going to be my thing so I'm calling it quits at page 43. I'm really trying to know when to give up and not spend my time reading books I might end up feeling unenthusiastic about.
December 15, 2018
I recognize that Lisa Halliday’s Asymmetry is a polarizing novel, that has received both significant praise (see NY Times Top 10 Books of 2018) as well as scorn from those who could not get into it for a variety reasons I understand. That said, there have been few books this year that have impressed me as much both in the quality in writing but the audacity in its choices in form and how these choices made the book’s thematic explorations that much more poignant for me as a reader.
Asymmetry is a book told in three parts.
The first follows Alice, a twenty-something editor who begins an affair with renowned author Ezra Blazer, who is loosely (maybe not so loosely) based on Philip Roth, who Halliday has admitted to having a romantic relationship with in the early 2000s. This is definitely the hook of the book and I imagine many rushed to read the section eager to get the dirt on Roth’s sexual escapades. But we get so much more. Halliday certainly presents a famous author able to use his power and wealth to engender romantic feelings from Alice and at times this power is exerted manipulatively and is expressed condescendingly, but she also presents a very tender, genuine relationship, where Blazer cares deeply for Alice and desperately fears losing her. Halliday is not interested in a hit job but offering an intimate insight into the author, both personally, but also his determination and single mindedness as an author, an insight Halliday stresses in her interviews.
The second part feels incongruent (asymmetrical one could say) and takes its time to catch the reader. Amar is an American-Iraqi travelling back to Iraq in the late 2000s to visit his brother and is held by authorities during a transfer in London. We quickly get taken back through Amar’s past, from being born over American airspace to his many returns to Iraq, witnessing first hand the destruction of the country as a result of the 2003 war that claimed to seek democracy but delivered chaos and death. We get grizzly accounts of the havoc as Amir recounts how he got to where he stood, suffering further indignity at the hands of the power that has destroyed his ancestral home and caused so much pain for his family. While the first section at first appears to be the more intimate and close to Halliday’s self, it is Amar’s story that is told in the first person, offering a depiction of pain and suffering that Alice’s romantic heart-break cannot.
The third part, the coda, is the transcript of an interview on the BBC Desert Island Discs, where a famous person (Ezra Blazer reappearing) offers up their musical desires if they were stranded on a desert island while retelling their life story. While meant to tie things up, Halliday is quite subtle in doing so, allowing Blazer to only give passing insights into the writing process, extolling authors to not force their characters together if not realistic but let their individual stories follow their own destinies. Blazer remains audacious, still eager for romantic hook up, but Halliday does not punish Blazer (or Roth) too much for his lechery, having awarded him the Nobel Prize for Literature (that Roth never won despite coveting it for so long).
So the question then is does Halliday pull off this very ambitious novel that asks the reader to fill in so many blanks, to find the connections, to create the meanings that would allow Asymmetry to exist as a cohesive novel. For me it does and I believe that partly this has to do with the novel situating itself in a time period that was incredibly formative to me, the early to late 2000s. The moment that struck me most was when I was forced to contrast visceral reactions I had to two moments, one in each of the two parts.
The first was an account of Alice and Ezra watching the now infamous American League Championship Series between the Yankees and the Red Sox in 2004, where the Sox came back from three games to none down to upset the Bronx Bombers and eventually go on to win the World Series. Alice, a devout Red Sox fan, is intensely watching the late innings of Game 5 when Ezra asks her to fetch a series of things from the neighbourhood store to deal with some physical discomfort he was experiencing. Alice becomes bitter and when forced to converse with Blazer after she returns she loses her patience. Being a Red Sox fan, who also remembers these moments, I was vicariously angry along with Alice, furious at Blazer’s selfishness, his lack of consideration for what was important to Alice.
The second moment is when Amar is on one of his visits to Iraq between 2005 and 2007. He is surrounded by the bloodshed, the anger of a people boiling over, but also a people fearful to carry on with their lives, worried about kidnappings, bombs, living. I felt a moment of shame both because this dire moment contrasted so much with the triviality of missing a few innings of a playoff game but also because my visceral reaction was greater for Alice’s misfortune than Amar’s. As someone who was actively involved in the anti-war movement in 2003, organizing massive protests to try to stop the invasion, how was it that I felt so distanced from the bloodshed. If the war and its consequences felt like such an abstraction for me, how would others less involved weigh their feelings? Was it just as Ezra insinuates in his interview that war for Americans (full disclosure I’m Canadian) is just a game, even for those opposed to the conflict?
For me this contrast perfectly encapsulates the asymmetry that Halliday is trying to depict, the stark incongruousness of the experiences that are nonetheless experiences that exist side by side in the current moment of humanity. There are likely several other asymmetry's to be explored here but for me this reading moment sunk me a little and made me appreciate what Halliday was trying to do.
A few more thoughts.
I imagine that if you have not read Philip Roth this book may not connect with you. I am hardly a Rothophile but I have read enough of his work, seen a few documentaries, that the hook of the first story drew me in immediately. I could hear Roth’s cadence in Blazer’s words. I could see his flaws (very much present in his work) in Blazer’s actions. Halliday’s portrayal is neither hitjob nor hagiography so maybe not the kind of hot gossip some hoped, but it is insightful into the mind of an author whose influence continued to permeate in American letters well after his star as a writer had begun to fade. If one does not have a relationship with Roth's work then maybe this fascination does not exist.
Secondly, I also understand why for some the structural choices made by Halliday does not work. I personally am not someone that impressed with experimental fiction, tending to prefer straightforward narratives with deep thematic explorations and emotional punch. Halliday manages to cover these as well as offer a formalistic choice that asks readers to work for meaning, to impose their own narrative structure. That may not work for everyone and maybe the time period the stories are set in helped me do so in ways others could not.
Lastly, the three books I enjoyed most this year (Sally Rooney’s Normal People, Rebecca Makkai’s The Great Believers, and Asymmetry) are fantastic examples of a stripped down writing styles that deliver a lot without being bogged down with overly ornate or descriptive prose. I do not know if this is a new trend, nor do I want to lessen the quality of writing from those with more verbose and adjective filled styles (like Chabon or Whitehead) but I find it refreshing and speaks to how powerful language can be without overdoing it.
Anyways, great work and looking forward to seeing what is next for Halliday.
Asymmetry is a book told in three parts.
The first follows Alice, a twenty-something editor who begins an affair with renowned author Ezra Blazer, who is loosely (maybe not so loosely) based on Philip Roth, who Halliday has admitted to having a romantic relationship with in the early 2000s. This is definitely the hook of the book and I imagine many rushed to read the section eager to get the dirt on Roth’s sexual escapades. But we get so much more. Halliday certainly presents a famous author able to use his power and wealth to engender romantic feelings from Alice and at times this power is exerted manipulatively and is expressed condescendingly, but she also presents a very tender, genuine relationship, where Blazer cares deeply for Alice and desperately fears losing her. Halliday is not interested in a hit job but offering an intimate insight into the author, both personally, but also his determination and single mindedness as an author, an insight Halliday stresses in her interviews.
The second part feels incongruent (asymmetrical one could say) and takes its time to catch the reader. Amar is an American-Iraqi travelling back to Iraq in the late 2000s to visit his brother and is held by authorities during a transfer in London. We quickly get taken back through Amar’s past, from being born over American airspace to his many returns to Iraq, witnessing first hand the destruction of the country as a result of the 2003 war that claimed to seek democracy but delivered chaos and death. We get grizzly accounts of the havoc as Amir recounts how he got to where he stood, suffering further indignity at the hands of the power that has destroyed his ancestral home and caused so much pain for his family. While the first section at first appears to be the more intimate and close to Halliday’s self, it is Amar’s story that is told in the first person, offering a depiction of pain and suffering that Alice’s romantic heart-break cannot.
The third part, the coda, is the transcript of an interview on the BBC Desert Island Discs, where a famous person (Ezra Blazer reappearing) offers up their musical desires if they were stranded on a desert island while retelling their life story. While meant to tie things up, Halliday is quite subtle in doing so, allowing Blazer to only give passing insights into the writing process, extolling authors to not force their characters together if not realistic but let their individual stories follow their own destinies. Blazer remains audacious, still eager for romantic hook up, but Halliday does not punish Blazer (or Roth) too much for his lechery, having awarded him the Nobel Prize for Literature (that Roth never won despite coveting it for so long).
So the question then is does Halliday pull off this very ambitious novel that asks the reader to fill in so many blanks, to find the connections, to create the meanings that would allow Asymmetry to exist as a cohesive novel. For me it does and I believe that partly this has to do with the novel situating itself in a time period that was incredibly formative to me, the early to late 2000s. The moment that struck me most was when I was forced to contrast visceral reactions I had to two moments, one in each of the two parts.
The first was an account of Alice and Ezra watching the now infamous American League Championship Series between the Yankees and the Red Sox in 2004, where the Sox came back from three games to none down to upset the Bronx Bombers and eventually go on to win the World Series. Alice, a devout Red Sox fan, is intensely watching the late innings of Game 5 when Ezra asks her to fetch a series of things from the neighbourhood store to deal with some physical discomfort he was experiencing. Alice becomes bitter and when forced to converse with Blazer after she returns she loses her patience. Being a Red Sox fan, who also remembers these moments, I was vicariously angry along with Alice, furious at Blazer’s selfishness, his lack of consideration for what was important to Alice.
The second moment is when Amar is on one of his visits to Iraq between 2005 and 2007. He is surrounded by the bloodshed, the anger of a people boiling over, but also a people fearful to carry on with their lives, worried about kidnappings, bombs, living. I felt a moment of shame both because this dire moment contrasted so much with the triviality of missing a few innings of a playoff game but also because my visceral reaction was greater for Alice’s misfortune than Amar’s. As someone who was actively involved in the anti-war movement in 2003, organizing massive protests to try to stop the invasion, how was it that I felt so distanced from the bloodshed. If the war and its consequences felt like such an abstraction for me, how would others less involved weigh their feelings? Was it just as Ezra insinuates in his interview that war for Americans (full disclosure I’m Canadian) is just a game, even for those opposed to the conflict?
For me this contrast perfectly encapsulates the asymmetry that Halliday is trying to depict, the stark incongruousness of the experiences that are nonetheless experiences that exist side by side in the current moment of humanity. There are likely several other asymmetry's to be explored here but for me this reading moment sunk me a little and made me appreciate what Halliday was trying to do.
A few more thoughts.
I imagine that if you have not read Philip Roth this book may not connect with you. I am hardly a Rothophile but I have read enough of his work, seen a few documentaries, that the hook of the first story drew me in immediately. I could hear Roth’s cadence in Blazer’s words. I could see his flaws (very much present in his work) in Blazer’s actions. Halliday’s portrayal is neither hitjob nor hagiography so maybe not the kind of hot gossip some hoped, but it is insightful into the mind of an author whose influence continued to permeate in American letters well after his star as a writer had begun to fade. If one does not have a relationship with Roth's work then maybe this fascination does not exist.
Secondly, I also understand why for some the structural choices made by Halliday does not work. I personally am not someone that impressed with experimental fiction, tending to prefer straightforward narratives with deep thematic explorations and emotional punch. Halliday manages to cover these as well as offer a formalistic choice that asks readers to work for meaning, to impose their own narrative structure. That may not work for everyone and maybe the time period the stories are set in helped me do so in ways others could not.
Lastly, the three books I enjoyed most this year (Sally Rooney’s Normal People, Rebecca Makkai’s The Great Believers, and Asymmetry) are fantastic examples of a stripped down writing styles that deliver a lot without being bogged down with overly ornate or descriptive prose. I do not know if this is a new trend, nor do I want to lessen the quality of writing from those with more verbose and adjective filled styles (like Chabon or Whitehead) but I find it refreshing and speaks to how powerful language can be without overdoing it.
Anyways, great work and looking forward to seeing what is next for Halliday.
December 31, 2018
Look, I had a pretty decent time spending a few days of my life reading this book. The first chapter or section titled “Folly” was a little outside of my comfort zone, but it kept me engaged and there were some pretty brilliant pieces of writing weaved within its pages. There is an abrupt, intentional turn in the next section, “Madness”, that feels like a different writer jumped in with a different story to tell, and...
Then, there is a short third section that kind of puts the asymmetry of the novel back into some sort of symmetry and connects a dot or two, almost like David Mitchell in a sense, but a little more meta and...
Ultimately, I think the book was just on another level that I wasn’t really ready to be on here at the end of the year. Right now I’m eating a bunch of junk food and not running or working so trying to think too hard and trying to be smart and stuff just isn’t happening for me. I completely understand what the author was trying to do, and I think she broke some ground on writing a very unique book that pushes the limits of what a novel can be, I really do think that. I just think my little holiday brain wasn’t clicking on all cylinders enough to truly understand and appreciate the literary uniqueness and asymmetrically whateverness of the plot.
I’ll tell you what this book did do for me though, in case you’re down here reading along and you’re curious. It made me realize that there are really great books out there that I’ve missed this year. Every year I get myself al caught up in a particular genre or a reading slump or something and I miss some of the wonderful books that win awards and tell great stories. Now, I want to read everything I’ve missed. I’ve added a lot of literary fiction to my shelves in hopes of spending 2019 reading some really fantastic literature. I want to be challenged and entertained. I want to think outside the box, read things I normally would shy away from, and read more critically. I want to read differently next year. I want to do things differently. I want to push myself further. I want to focus on quality and not quantity of books read in a year. I want to raise the bar and read new authors. I want to read more books written by people that don’t look like me. That’s how I want to spend 2019.
I want to go on a new journey and chronicle my adventures in new ways. I want to put my phone down and read more physical books without the internet too close to my fingertips. I want to make the next year count. I want it to matter. I want to feel good about it when it’s over. I want to shake things up and...
Then, there is a short third section that kind of puts the asymmetry of the novel back into some sort of symmetry and connects a dot or two, almost like David Mitchell in a sense, but a little more meta and...
Ultimately, I think the book was just on another level that I wasn’t really ready to be on here at the end of the year. Right now I’m eating a bunch of junk food and not running or working so trying to think too hard and trying to be smart and stuff just isn’t happening for me. I completely understand what the author was trying to do, and I think she broke some ground on writing a very unique book that pushes the limits of what a novel can be, I really do think that. I just think my little holiday brain wasn’t clicking on all cylinders enough to truly understand and appreciate the literary uniqueness and asymmetrically whateverness of the plot.
I’ll tell you what this book did do for me though, in case you’re down here reading along and you’re curious. It made me realize that there are really great books out there that I’ve missed this year. Every year I get myself al caught up in a particular genre or a reading slump or something and I miss some of the wonderful books that win awards and tell great stories. Now, I want to read everything I’ve missed. I’ve added a lot of literary fiction to my shelves in hopes of spending 2019 reading some really fantastic literature. I want to be challenged and entertained. I want to think outside the box, read things I normally would shy away from, and read more critically. I want to read differently next year. I want to do things differently. I want to push myself further. I want to focus on quality and not quantity of books read in a year. I want to raise the bar and read new authors. I want to read more books written by people that don’t look like me. That’s how I want to spend 2019.
I want to go on a new journey and chronicle my adventures in new ways. I want to put my phone down and read more physical books without the internet too close to my fingertips. I want to make the next year count. I want it to matter. I want to feel good about it when it’s over. I want to shake things up and...
May 23, 2018
Update: one wonders if the death of Philip Roth will increase the chances of this book being listed for some literary prizes in the UK or US.
Asymmetry is the debut novel of Lisa Halliday. The book consists of two novellas and coda.
The first novella, set in the early 2000s tells the story of Alice – both the opening and closing of this novella, make it clear that the characters name is a very explicit nod to the Alice of Lewis Carroll. An aspiring writer, working at a publisher in New York she bumps into the famous, multiple Pulitzer Prize winning now elderly writer Ezra Blaze – and the two commence an unlikely (*) affair which Alice herself admits could easily be seen as “a healthy young woman losing time with a decrepit old man”. This section is written very much in the great American novel style of an ageing male novelist, with for a non-US reader far too much baseball – but with interesting vignettes, laced with classic litetary excerpts (Twain, Camus, Genet, Miller, Joyce, Dickens, Levi) with music-hall song lyrics and with the citations for the winners of the Nobel Prize for literature during the time period (2002-2004). The story finishes with Alice waiting for jury service and the increasingly frail Ezra in hospital.
The second novella is a distinct change of tone and character and even person (from third to first). Amar is a US based Iraqi-American dual national, in 2008 on his way to visit his brother who to their parent’s dismay decided to live back in Iraq as a Doctor, he attempts to stop over in London and stay with war journalist friend. The story is set in an immigration holding room at Heathrow, and between questioning by immigration officials, Amar reflects back on his life and the different paths it could have taken, including the hazardous life of his Iraqi based relatives (including his brother) and the increasing threat of kidnap and ransom demands.
The two stories at first only seem subtly and at most tangentially linked.
The coda is a recording of Desert Island Discs in 2011 – where the guest is a garralous, now Nobel-laureate Ezra – he tells (or possibly embellishes) his life story while discussing his records, and attempting to seduce Sue Lawley – but one comment sheds a completely different light on the relationship between the two novellas and on the whole novel.
The novel itself then becomes one with a number of different but closely interrelated themes: inequalities or assymetries (in age, wealth, fame, geography, nationality, official and legal status); the role of fiction in examining and exploring these asymmetries; how these inequalities drive and shape literary influences (particularly for a young author).
Overall this was a book that I enjoyed much more after I finished and reflected on it than when I was reading it – perhaps not least due to my complete lack of identification with the baseball references, or the bizarre relationship, in the first section. By contrast, the second section, where the author is clearly writing about cultures, peoples and circumstances of which she has no knowledge and where the narrator himself comments “It may perhaps be said – if anyone dared – that the most worthless literature of the world has been that which has been written by the men of one nation concerning the men of the other” – I found much more enjoyable and convincing. After reading the coda I realised that much of this may be completely deliberate and all part of the meta-fictional conceit.
Overall this is a book I would like to return to after its official publication – both to read interviews
with the author and to discuss the book with other readers.
My thanks to Granta Press for an ARC via NetGalley.
(*) Thanks to the New York Times for pointing out that this affair is at least partly biographical - based, at least in part, on a real relationship between the author and Philip Roth some 15-20 years ago. I have to say I had assumed/hoped that there was elements in the first and third sections which deliberately a pastiche of a certain type of great American novel/elderly American male novelist ....... I now worry it was more of a tribute.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/02/bo...
Asymmetry is the debut novel of Lisa Halliday. The book consists of two novellas and coda.
The first novella, set in the early 2000s tells the story of Alice – both the opening and closing of this novella, make it clear that the characters name is a very explicit nod to the Alice of Lewis Carroll. An aspiring writer, working at a publisher in New York she bumps into the famous, multiple Pulitzer Prize winning now elderly writer Ezra Blaze – and the two commence an unlikely (*) affair which Alice herself admits could easily be seen as “a healthy young woman losing time with a decrepit old man”. This section is written very much in the great American novel style of an ageing male novelist, with for a non-US reader far too much baseball – but with interesting vignettes, laced with classic litetary excerpts (Twain, Camus, Genet, Miller, Joyce, Dickens, Levi) with music-hall song lyrics and with the citations for the winners of the Nobel Prize for literature during the time period (2002-2004). The story finishes with Alice waiting for jury service and the increasingly frail Ezra in hospital.
The second novella is a distinct change of tone and character and even person (from third to first). Amar is a US based Iraqi-American dual national, in 2008 on his way to visit his brother who to their parent’s dismay decided to live back in Iraq as a Doctor, he attempts to stop over in London and stay with war journalist friend. The story is set in an immigration holding room at Heathrow, and between questioning by immigration officials, Amar reflects back on his life and the different paths it could have taken, including the hazardous life of his Iraqi based relatives (including his brother) and the increasing threat of kidnap and ransom demands.
The two stories at first only seem subtly and at most tangentially linked.
The coda is a recording of Desert Island Discs in 2011 – where the guest is a garralous, now Nobel-laureate Ezra – he tells (or possibly embellishes) his life story while discussing his records, and attempting to seduce Sue Lawley – but one comment sheds a completely different light on the relationship between the two novellas and on the whole novel.
The novel itself then becomes one with a number of different but closely interrelated themes: inequalities or assymetries (in age, wealth, fame, geography, nationality, official and legal status); the role of fiction in examining and exploring these asymmetries; how these inequalities drive and shape literary influences (particularly for a young author).
Overall this was a book that I enjoyed much more after I finished and reflected on it than when I was reading it – perhaps not least due to my complete lack of identification with the baseball references, or the bizarre relationship, in the first section. By contrast, the second section, where the author is clearly writing about cultures, peoples and circumstances of which she has no knowledge and where the narrator himself comments “It may perhaps be said – if anyone dared – that the most worthless literature of the world has been that which has been written by the men of one nation concerning the men of the other” – I found much more enjoyable and convincing. After reading the coda I realised that much of this may be completely deliberate and all part of the meta-fictional conceit.
Overall this is a book I would like to return to after its official publication – both to read interviews
with the author and to discuss the book with other readers.
.... a rather surprising little novel ...... about the extent to which we’re able to penetrate the looking-glass and imagine a life, indeed a consciousness, that goes some way to reduce the blind spots in our own ............ a kind of veiled portrait of someone determined to transcend her provenance, her privilege, her naiveté.
My thanks to Granta Press for an ARC via NetGalley.
(*) Thanks to the New York Times for pointing out that this affair is at least partly biographical - based, at least in part, on a real relationship between the author and Philip Roth some 15-20 years ago. I have to say I had assumed/hoped that there was elements in the first and third sections which deliberately a pastiche of a certain type of great American novel/elderly American male novelist ....... I now worry it was more of a tribute.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/02/bo...
June 16, 2020
Tedious and the title of the novel is reflective for the way the two main parts of the book (don't) work together in my opinion - 1.5 stars
And the result was these airless little short stories that could not be faulted on the sentence level but that had no resonance, no reason for being, no spontaneity.
General
I feel there is a reason I did not take this novel up again for more than a year after I prematurely needed to return it to the library. And why I only read 30 pages at that time.
It’s not a badly written book, also not a very eloquent one for that matter, although the “ear” of Lisa Halliday for capturing everyday conversation in all its banality is well developed.
But I feel Asymmetry lacks heart, feels self aware and at the same time kind of insincere.
That I did not like the book is not because of a lack of themes or juxtapositions: rich, poor, educated, uneducated, urban life vs rural outdoors, east and west, family and individuality, shaping your future or god willing as an attitude, belonging and alienation.
I can go on and on about the themes, but just themes don’t make a good book.
Folly
Do you ever think this isn’t good for you?
Oké, I got some red flags in the first pages on the relationship between Alice and the prize winning writer (loosely based on Philip Roth). He doesn’t seem to respect her, throwing away her purse and being out of touch with her at whims and not calling her (name wise) how she’d liked to be called. The prose is clean, well reflecting the feeling of being in love although I get very little feeling of the live of Alice besides her relationship with the writer, and as said, that definitely felt as an unbalanced and unhealthy relationship.
Alice her sexual interest/enthusiasm belies my initial interpretation a bit, the desire and attraction definitely doesn’t just come from Ezra, and in the end I even felt she was kind of profiteering from him, with even a proposal to pay off her study loan. Also I realized him to be quite a lot older than I imagined when their ages together were casually mentioned, certainly taking into account that Alice was confirmed to be in her twenties.
The amazement of having time for culture and the fine things of life, like a warm wind entering the life of Alice when she becomes more affluent because of Ezra, is interesting and the enormous numbers of pills and medical specialist that come with aging are also well depicted.
But I have no clue about baseball, so those parts alienated me quite a bit, and also what’s “Shave and a haircut, two bits” got to mean is still unclear to me.
All in all a tad unbalanced but a solid three stars for this first part.
Madness
But in my experience too, writing down does not work - except maybe in the sense that the more time you spend writing things down the less time you spend doing things you don’t want to forget.
The pace in this part was seemingly much higher, with staccato interrogations at border control when we follow Amar Ala Jaafari who is on his way to his brother and niece in Iraq.
Despite some nice prose, I wrote down a lot more sentences in this part than in Folly, I lacked any kind of emotional connection to our narrator. He feels so distant and a bit robot like (thinking to himself: Knowing I’ll feel good later makes me feel good enough now).
The flashbacks on his life, interwoven in the airport scenes, felt plodding, a bit much tell and too self consciously self reflective to really engage me.
There are some musings on the difference in time perception in the east and west, some references to Stendahl, to Primo Levi, some politics, we have an abortion, some religion, the pain of family in a wartorn country and Clinton, Bush and Obama’s impact on Iraq.
And then the observation: This is because politics in imaginative work is like a shot in the middle of a concert. The noise is deafening but imparts no energy”. Which is a quote that for me captured the feeling this part of the novel gave to me: constructed, or fake deep, if I want to be more unkind.
However much our narrator on the same page thinks And in any case my family and their friends and I weren’t characters in an imaginative work; we were real people weathering real lives... I never once felt his tale come alive
Maybe it is also because we have a college aged man using the following words on one page: verisimilitude, bifurcation, incessant kaleidoscope and tranquility, but overall I felt that the wait he has to endure in the airport is a good metaphor for the reader plodding through this section.
Closure?
And then we have a very short third section that should act as an "unexpected coda". It is basically Ezra appearing in a radio show Amar used to listen to.
Anyway: the links between the stories remain very vague in my opinion and don’t create any kind of resonance for me. Rather a disappointing read all in all but happy to have it of my currently reading shelf.
And the result was these airless little short stories that could not be faulted on the sentence level but that had no resonance, no reason for being, no spontaneity.
General
I feel there is a reason I did not take this novel up again for more than a year after I prematurely needed to return it to the library. And why I only read 30 pages at that time.
It’s not a badly written book, also not a very eloquent one for that matter, although the “ear” of Lisa Halliday for capturing everyday conversation in all its banality is well developed.
But I feel Asymmetry lacks heart, feels self aware and at the same time kind of insincere.
That I did not like the book is not because of a lack of themes or juxtapositions: rich, poor, educated, uneducated, urban life vs rural outdoors, east and west, family and individuality, shaping your future or god willing as an attitude, belonging and alienation.
I can go on and on about the themes, but just themes don’t make a good book.
Folly
Do you ever think this isn’t good for you?
Oké, I got some red flags in the first pages on the relationship between Alice and the prize winning writer (loosely based on Philip Roth). He doesn’t seem to respect her, throwing away her purse and being out of touch with her at whims and not calling her (name wise) how she’d liked to be called. The prose is clean, well reflecting the feeling of being in love although I get very little feeling of the live of Alice besides her relationship with the writer, and as said, that definitely felt as an unbalanced and unhealthy relationship.
Alice her sexual interest/enthusiasm belies my initial interpretation a bit, the desire and attraction definitely doesn’t just come from Ezra, and in the end I even felt she was kind of profiteering from him, with even a proposal to pay off her study loan. Also I realized him to be quite a lot older than I imagined when their ages together were casually mentioned, certainly taking into account that Alice was confirmed to be in her twenties.
The amazement of having time for culture and the fine things of life, like a warm wind entering the life of Alice when she becomes more affluent because of Ezra, is interesting and the enormous numbers of pills and medical specialist that come with aging are also well depicted.
But I have no clue about baseball, so those parts alienated me quite a bit, and also what’s “Shave and a haircut, two bits” got to mean is still unclear to me.
All in all a tad unbalanced but a solid three stars for this first part.
Madness
But in my experience too, writing down does not work - except maybe in the sense that the more time you spend writing things down the less time you spend doing things you don’t want to forget.
The pace in this part was seemingly much higher, with staccato interrogations at border control when we follow Amar Ala Jaafari who is on his way to his brother and niece in Iraq.
Despite some nice prose, I wrote down a lot more sentences in this part than in Folly, I lacked any kind of emotional connection to our narrator. He feels so distant and a bit robot like (thinking to himself: Knowing I’ll feel good later makes me feel good enough now).
The flashbacks on his life, interwoven in the airport scenes, felt plodding, a bit much tell and too self consciously self reflective to really engage me.
There are some musings on the difference in time perception in the east and west, some references to Stendahl, to Primo Levi, some politics, we have an abortion, some religion, the pain of family in a wartorn country and Clinton, Bush and Obama’s impact on Iraq.
And then the observation: This is because politics in imaginative work is like a shot in the middle of a concert. The noise is deafening but imparts no energy”. Which is a quote that for me captured the feeling this part of the novel gave to me: constructed, or fake deep, if I want to be more unkind.
However much our narrator on the same page thinks And in any case my family and their friends and I weren’t characters in an imaginative work; we were real people weathering real lives... I never once felt his tale come alive
Maybe it is also because we have a college aged man using the following words on one page: verisimilitude, bifurcation, incessant kaleidoscope and tranquility, but overall I felt that the wait he has to endure in the airport is a good metaphor for the reader plodding through this section.
Closure?
And then we have a very short third section that should act as an "unexpected coda". It is basically Ezra appearing in a radio show Amar used to listen to.
Anyway: the links between the stories remain very vague in my opinion and don’t create any kind of resonance for me. Rather a disappointing read all in all but happy to have it of my currently reading shelf.
July 12, 2020
"Bu ilişki biraz kalbini kırıyor mu?"
"Sanmıyorum. Belki birazcık kenarlarını kırıyordur."
Kenarlarım kırıla kırıla okudum Asimetri'yi. Duygulardan hiç bahsetmemesine rağmen bütün duyguları muhteşem şekilde iletebilmesine hayran oldum.
Tavsiye ederim.
"Sanmıyorum. Belki birazcık kenarlarını kırıyordur."
Kenarlarım kırıla kırıla okudum Asimetri'yi. Duygulardan hiç bahsetmemesine rağmen bütün duyguları muhteşem şekilde iletebilmesine hayran oldum.
Tavsiye ederim.
July 23, 2018
Lisa Halliday has created a work of stunning originality. Consisting of three distinct sections, Asymmetry presents more of a work of concept than either plot or character. The three plots have subtle connections that the reader sometimes has to work at discovering. The first, Folly, concerns the May/December romance of Alice, a young editor living in an upper west side apartment, and her relationship with Ezra Blazer, a much older, prominent author who guides her senses of self and taste. Madness, the center story, at first seeming to be totally unconnected, concerns Amar, an American born of Iraqi immigrants, a victim of racial profiling who finds his attempts to spend a lengthy layover in London stymied by NAS (think TSA in Britain). Amar's story is told in retrospect as he waits out the hours in a holding room in Heathrow. The two stories are separated by five years, but there is a tenuous connection between the two characters, so subtle, it could be missed entirely. In the final section, Ezra tells an interviewer what music he would choose to have with him should be become stranded on a desert isle, and embellishes his biography around his choices. Each of these elements could stand alone, the first two being the length of novellas, but together, they make for compelling, exciting reading
March 10, 2019
Follow Book Nation by Jen for all reviews and recommendations.
An unlikely relationship, a problem at the airport, and an interview with a famous writer…three parts, seemingly unrelated: Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday delivers more than you would expect!
If you haven’t picked up a copy of Asymmetry yet, do yourself a favor and buy it today! Delve into this book to absorb what you can, then after, you may want to read the discussion questions. Hint: If you want to discover more…read Alice in Wonderland, read a Philip Roth book, then read Asymmetry again to make sense of it, and look up each character’s name and origin and anything else that can be googled. You will be surprised and overwhelmed with the incredible amount of literary knowledge and evident research Halliday included in this masterpiece of a debut.
First we are observing a relationship between a young female editor and a much older, successful writer. At times it may seem natural and then is also may feel highly inappropriate. Next we are inside the mind of a muslim man detained at the London airport, and finally, we read an interview with a self centered, arrogant pulitzer prize winning author. Lisa Halliday’s novel, Asymmetry, is made up of three seemingly unrelated sections. At a closer look you may find in Folly, the first section, editor Alice and writer Ezra are very similar to real life young Halliday and Philip Roth. In Madness, section two, the author writes as if she is a Muslim man, with authenticity and knowledge of life in Iraq and a wartime mindset. The final section is an interview with the brash prize winner where his true colors are evident and not altogether pleasant.
Without any spoilers, I must stop here! My book group chose this novel and it was the most enlightening and interesting discussion to date! If you would like more information about Lisa Halliday and Asymmetry, check out this author video interview.
If you have any comments or questions about anything related to Asymmetry, I would love to hear it!
An unlikely relationship, a problem at the airport, and an interview with a famous writer…three parts, seemingly unrelated: Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday delivers more than you would expect!
If you haven’t picked up a copy of Asymmetry yet, do yourself a favor and buy it today! Delve into this book to absorb what you can, then after, you may want to read the discussion questions. Hint: If you want to discover more…read Alice in Wonderland, read a Philip Roth book, then read Asymmetry again to make sense of it, and look up each character’s name and origin and anything else that can be googled. You will be surprised and overwhelmed with the incredible amount of literary knowledge and evident research Halliday included in this masterpiece of a debut.
First we are observing a relationship between a young female editor and a much older, successful writer. At times it may seem natural and then is also may feel highly inappropriate. Next we are inside the mind of a muslim man detained at the London airport, and finally, we read an interview with a self centered, arrogant pulitzer prize winning author. Lisa Halliday’s novel, Asymmetry, is made up of three seemingly unrelated sections. At a closer look you may find in Folly, the first section, editor Alice and writer Ezra are very similar to real life young Halliday and Philip Roth. In Madness, section two, the author writes as if she is a Muslim man, with authenticity and knowledge of life in Iraq and a wartime mindset. The final section is an interview with the brash prize winner where his true colors are evident and not altogether pleasant.
Without any spoilers, I must stop here! My book group chose this novel and it was the most enlightening and interesting discussion to date! If you would like more information about Lisa Halliday and Asymmetry, check out this author video interview.
If you have any comments or questions about anything related to Asymmetry, I would love to hear it!
September 23, 2018
Funziona più o meno così.
1. Leggo in giro che sta per uscire l’ipotetico libro dell’anno;
2. Mi esalto;
3. Le aspettative crescono;
4. Appena riesco me lo procuro;
5. Lo leggo e.
Tre parti:
1 L’amore/affetto tra Alice ed Ezra. Riferimenti alla storia tra la stessa Halliday e Philip Roth. Quello che ne esce è un racconto abbastanza insulso, che non regge né per trama né per scrittura.
2 Amar Ala Jaafari viene trattenuto in un aeroporto di Londra per accertamenti. Parallelamente vengono ricostruiti momenti della sua vita, tra l’Iraq e gli Stati Uniti. Senza dubbio alcune delle parti migliori sono qui dentro. Però siamo nella normalità, nulla per cui sconvolgersi.
3 Torna Ezra, intervistato in radio nel programma Desert Island Discs. Scopriamo qualcosa di più su vita, libri, dischi preferiti. Chiusura poco efficace.
Difficile trovare un motivo per consigliarvelo. Forse un po’ di curiosità.
Non.
Ci.
Siamo. [58/100]
Per l’estate del 2007 avevo finito i miei doveri accademici e le ore di insegnamento, e mi restava solo la tesi, che avanzava all’indolente ritmo di un paragrafo al giorno. Arrivai alla conclusione che il problema era Los Angeles, o meglio, che il problema era la dipendenza da Internet che mi era venuta a Los Angeles, così subaffittai il mio appartamento di West Hollywood e per l’estate mi trasferii in un bungalow sul Big Bear Lake, centosessanta chilometri più a est, nella foresta di San Bernardino. Avevo una stufa a legna, vista sui monti, e alla parete, al posto di un televisore a schermo piatto, una riproduzione di una foto di Ansel Adams. La prima cosa che feci appena arrivato, a parte buttare un ragno nel gabinetto e tirare l’acqua, fu spostare il tavolo dalla cucina in soggiorno, dove già mi vedevo circondato da libri di testo e fogli di dati, a lavorare senza sforzo e con profitto fino a notte fonda. La seconda cosa fu mettermi in macchina e andare alla ricerca di un Internet café. Ero appena uscito dal vialetto quando squillò il cellulare: era mio padre che chiamava per dirmi che Zaid era stato rapito.
1. Leggo in giro che sta per uscire l’ipotetico libro dell’anno;
2. Mi esalto;
3. Le aspettative crescono;
4. Appena riesco me lo procuro;
5. Lo leggo e.
Tre parti:
1 L’amore/affetto tra Alice ed Ezra. Riferimenti alla storia tra la stessa Halliday e Philip Roth. Quello che ne esce è un racconto abbastanza insulso, che non regge né per trama né per scrittura.
2 Amar Ala Jaafari viene trattenuto in un aeroporto di Londra per accertamenti. Parallelamente vengono ricostruiti momenti della sua vita, tra l’Iraq e gli Stati Uniti. Senza dubbio alcune delle parti migliori sono qui dentro. Però siamo nella normalità, nulla per cui sconvolgersi.
3 Torna Ezra, intervistato in radio nel programma Desert Island Discs. Scopriamo qualcosa di più su vita, libri, dischi preferiti. Chiusura poco efficace.
Difficile trovare un motivo per consigliarvelo. Forse un po’ di curiosità.
Non.
Ci.
Siamo. [58/100]
Per l’estate del 2007 avevo finito i miei doveri accademici e le ore di insegnamento, e mi restava solo la tesi, che avanzava all’indolente ritmo di un paragrafo al giorno. Arrivai alla conclusione che il problema era Los Angeles, o meglio, che il problema era la dipendenza da Internet che mi era venuta a Los Angeles, così subaffittai il mio appartamento di West Hollywood e per l’estate mi trasferii in un bungalow sul Big Bear Lake, centosessanta chilometri più a est, nella foresta di San Bernardino. Avevo una stufa a legna, vista sui monti, e alla parete, al posto di un televisore a schermo piatto, una riproduzione di una foto di Ansel Adams. La prima cosa che feci appena arrivato, a parte buttare un ragno nel gabinetto e tirare l’acqua, fu spostare il tavolo dalla cucina in soggiorno, dove già mi vedevo circondato da libri di testo e fogli di dati, a lavorare senza sforzo e con profitto fino a notte fonda. La seconda cosa fu mettermi in macchina e andare alla ricerca di un Internet café. Ero appena uscito dal vialetto quando squillò il cellulare: era mio padre che chiamava per dirmi che Zaid era stato rapito.
July 9, 2018
This is not a beach or pool read. You must read the first story, Folly, carefully. Especially to understand the meaning of the second story, Madness. You may be able to decipher Madness before you get to the secret code, story three, Ezra Blazer’s Secret Island Discs. If you’re like me, you won’t decipher it even after that. This novel was a lot of fun for the cogno senti, the professional reviewers. The ones who knew what the second story was. It you read it looking for parallels between Madness and Folly, maybe you’ll see it. It you don’t, the tell is in the third story. Even then, you may have to go back to the second story to “get it.”
Is it worth the mind games? No. I, unlike professional reviewers, don’t consider a novel a “masterpiece” when I’m left in the dark about the barebones meaning of stories that seem to have no connection. Throw me a bone. Okay, a bigger bone than you threw. I read other reviews from people who didn’t read the big newspaper reviews first and they were as clueless as I. Give me a novel, not a jigsaw puzzle.
On the other hand, the individual stories are rich and engaging. Halliday asks deep, profound questions. Can we ever understand people beyond our own perspectives? Their identities, race, religions, nationalities, socio-economic standing, power, and geography? Must we stay in our own lanes when writing fiction? Can we go outside our provenance? Are these too many themes to handle in one novel?
Folly is engrossing, fascinating. I had a faint Lolita twinge but Alice is a consenting adult. Twenty-five-year-old Alice, an editorial assistant, begins an affair with a 72-year-old world-famous writer who buys her an ice cream cone on a park bench in New York. Felt a little pervy to me, but whatever. The affair begins at the start of the Iraq war. The rules for the affair are set by Ezra, whose name we don’t learn until about halfway through the story. So he’s Jewish. Apparently, this is a true story about Philip Roth and the author’s fling with him. Ezra invites Alice over when it suits him. He buys expensive gifts for Alice. He takes it upon himself to educate Alice. After all, she mentions she wants to be a writer. So she must read what he says. The differences in their education are evident when she pronounces the author of the book he gives her “Ooh, Camus!”…rhyming it with “Seamus.”
When he wants her to go home, he sings, “The party’s over…It’s time to dall it a d-a-a-a-a-y…” At one point, he hands her $600 to buy an air conditioner since he’s headed out to his country house. In a rare display of Alice’s feelings, “her stomach felt as if she were still back in his elevator and someone had cut the suspension.” The next time he leaves, she hurls the phone into the hamper.
Their relationship begins to change. They see less of each other. Ezra calls from his phone. Her phone reads, “CALLER ID BLOCKED.” It’s a secret relationship. Soon, Ezra’s asking Alice to pick up preserves from Zabars. His friend calls her “the kid.” Ezra encourages her to say “fuck you” instead of constantly saying “I’m sorry.” This leads to Alice saying “Fuck you” to Ezra at a rather ironic time. She finds herself becoming his caregiver.
In time, Alice confuses her own life for his.
Ezra tells Alice what movies she should see, how she should cut her hair.
Ezra figures out she’s writing about “[p]eople more interesting than I am.” About “War. Dictatorships. World affairs.” Ezra discourages this. “For her part, Alice was starting to consider really rather seriously whether a former choigirl from Massachusetts might be capable of conjuring the consciousness of a Muslim man…”
In another rare glimpse into Alice’s interior life, Alice dreams “of a more contemplative life. A life of seeing, really seeing the world, and of having something novel to say about the view. On the other hand: Could all the rural quietude on earth cure the anxiety of self-doubt? Was she even capable of being alone for as long as it took. Would it make her life any less inconsequential than it was now. And hadn’t he already said everything she wanted to say?”
Finally, Alice asks herself, does she want Ezra, or does she want to be him? There’s a power shift. Who’s calling the shots now?
Fifty percent of the way through the novel, a new story begins: Madness. And this is where you must pay close attention.
An Iraqui-American, Amar, is detained at immigration at Heathrow airport. There are parallels between the first and second, and the second and third stories. Read too fast and you’ll miss them. While Amar is detained, he has plenty of time to reflect on his life.
It’s not until the 86% mark that we reach the third story, the coda. Things come together, but very subtly. You have to read between the lines. If you don’t get it, read reviews by The Atlantic, or The New Yorker, New York Times or The Washington Post review. Then you’ll have your “Now I get it” moment. Was that too much work? It was for me.
I don’t like being hit over the head with themes. I also don’t like having to read a book then skim it twice to figure out what the themes are. This work was a little too ingenious for me. A work should stand by itself, not need external help to flush it out.
Is it worth the mind games? No. I, unlike professional reviewers, don’t consider a novel a “masterpiece” when I’m left in the dark about the barebones meaning of stories that seem to have no connection. Throw me a bone. Okay, a bigger bone than you threw. I read other reviews from people who didn’t read the big newspaper reviews first and they were as clueless as I. Give me a novel, not a jigsaw puzzle.
On the other hand, the individual stories are rich and engaging. Halliday asks deep, profound questions. Can we ever understand people beyond our own perspectives? Their identities, race, religions, nationalities, socio-economic standing, power, and geography? Must we stay in our own lanes when writing fiction? Can we go outside our provenance? Are these too many themes to handle in one novel?
Folly is engrossing, fascinating. I had a faint Lolita twinge but Alice is a consenting adult. Twenty-five-year-old Alice, an editorial assistant, begins an affair with a 72-year-old world-famous writer who buys her an ice cream cone on a park bench in New York. Felt a little pervy to me, but whatever. The affair begins at the start of the Iraq war. The rules for the affair are set by Ezra, whose name we don’t learn until about halfway through the story. So he’s Jewish. Apparently, this is a true story about Philip Roth and the author’s fling with him. Ezra invites Alice over when it suits him. He buys expensive gifts for Alice. He takes it upon himself to educate Alice. After all, she mentions she wants to be a writer. So she must read what he says. The differences in their education are evident when she pronounces the author of the book he gives her “Ooh, Camus!”…rhyming it with “Seamus.”
When he wants her to go home, he sings, “The party’s over…It’s time to dall it a d-a-a-a-a-y…” At one point, he hands her $600 to buy an air conditioner since he’s headed out to his country house. In a rare display of Alice’s feelings, “her stomach felt as if she were still back in his elevator and someone had cut the suspension.” The next time he leaves, she hurls the phone into the hamper.
Their relationship begins to change. They see less of each other. Ezra calls from his phone. Her phone reads, “CALLER ID BLOCKED.” It’s a secret relationship. Soon, Ezra’s asking Alice to pick up preserves from Zabars. His friend calls her “the kid.” Ezra encourages her to say “fuck you” instead of constantly saying “I’m sorry.” This leads to Alice saying “Fuck you” to Ezra at a rather ironic time. She finds herself becoming his caregiver.
In time, Alice confuses her own life for his.
Ezra tells Alice what movies she should see, how she should cut her hair.
Ezra figures out she’s writing about “[p]eople more interesting than I am.” About “War. Dictatorships. World affairs.” Ezra discourages this. “For her part, Alice was starting to consider really rather seriously whether a former choigirl from Massachusetts might be capable of conjuring the consciousness of a Muslim man…”
In another rare glimpse into Alice’s interior life, Alice dreams “of a more contemplative life. A life of seeing, really seeing the world, and of having something novel to say about the view. On the other hand: Could all the rural quietude on earth cure the anxiety of self-doubt? Was she even capable of being alone for as long as it took. Would it make her life any less inconsequential than it was now. And hadn’t he already said everything she wanted to say?”
Finally, Alice asks herself, does she want Ezra, or does she want to be him? There’s a power shift. Who’s calling the shots now?
Fifty percent of the way through the novel, a new story begins: Madness. And this is where you must pay close attention.
An Iraqui-American, Amar, is detained at immigration at Heathrow airport. There are parallels between the first and second, and the second and third stories. Read too fast and you’ll miss them. While Amar is detained, he has plenty of time to reflect on his life.
It’s not until the 86% mark that we reach the third story, the coda. Things come together, but very subtly. You have to read between the lines. If you don’t get it, read reviews by The Atlantic, or The New Yorker, New York Times or The Washington Post review. Then you’ll have your “Now I get it” moment. Was that too much work? It was for me.
I don’t like being hit over the head with themes. I also don’t like having to read a book then skim it twice to figure out what the themes are. This work was a little too ingenious for me. A work should stand by itself, not need external help to flush it out.
February 7, 2018
I should have trusted my instinct and stopped after the first section.
That being said, the second section was better than the first. (I waffled between 1 and 2 stars for the second section's sake). Things that other reviewers noted about the revelations in the final section were not clear to me at all, and that just compounded my dislike of this book.
The best thing about this is the cover art.
I won this in a Goodreads Giveaway.
That being said, the second section was better than the first. (I waffled between 1 and 2 stars for the second section's sake). Things that other reviewers noted about the revelations in the final section were not clear to me at all, and that just compounded my dislike of this book.
The best thing about this is the cover art.
I won this in a Goodreads Giveaway.
March 22, 2018
There are two virtually unrelated stories here. The first section is a realistic story of the affair an aging (single) well known author has with a much younger girl, Alice, who is an editor. In that the cute author actually dated Phillip Roth for a time, much of the story must have been based on that relationship. As an older male, I enjoyed their relationship and I know many successful older men attract young women for a lot of different reasons. Alice takes care of Ezra in many ways and also seems to enjoy a physical relationship with him. The story is never sexually graphic, all done in good taste, and there's no doubt that there is a nice mutual affection.
And then, all of a sudden that story finishes up and we jump into the life of an American male raised primarily in the US but has citizenship in the US as well as Iraq with a lot of family still living in Iraq. Some of his story is interesting, the differences between the two cultures, the sad problems in Iraq, the fundamental ways a different cultural background can make decision making radically different. Some of the writing here is excellent. But it wasn't a very satisfying story to me and the two didn't tie together very well except on a 10,000 ft. level regarding the vicissitudes of life.
I am following the author because I think she is talented. This was a 3.5 read for me.
And then, all of a sudden that story finishes up and we jump into the life of an American male raised primarily in the US but has citizenship in the US as well as Iraq with a lot of family still living in Iraq. Some of his story is interesting, the differences between the two cultures, the sad problems in Iraq, the fundamental ways a different cultural background can make decision making radically different. Some of the writing here is excellent. But it wasn't a very satisfying story to me and the two didn't tie together very well except on a 10,000 ft. level regarding the vicissitudes of life.
I am following the author because I think she is talented. This was a 3.5 read for me.
March 13, 2019
Although I was wary of this novel's buzz as a "literary phenomenon," I did like it more than I expected. Halliday is very clever and the novel is exceptionally well-written and readable. However, at times the asymmetrical structure almost toppled over under its self-conscious weight. I think "Alice's" ambitions to write outside of her own experience were admirable but uneven. I didn't need part three to tie it together and this section felt like Alice's description of lovemaking with Ezra -arriving "like a weak water-bubbler."
October 10, 2021
I am a reader who likes to look for the ‘key’ to read a particular book. Sometimes this is hidden somewhere along the way in a quote, sometimes it is completely implicit and you have to find or construct it yourself. And once in while there are several keys. A title like “Asymmetry” seems to leave nothing to the imagination, and so I started this very hyped debut with a search for inequities, imbalances and asymmetries. And it must be said: I was richly rewarded!
It starts immediately in the first part with the relationship between 25-year-old Alice and 40-year older Ezra Blazer. Alice is a blank slate, a girl who doesn't quite know what to do with her life and leads a shady existence, while Ezra has tons of experience, being a celebrated writer who can afford all the luxuries. So, bingo, a first clear asymmetry! I must say that I felt very uncomfortable reading this first part, especially since old Ezra not just is a womanizer, but rather looks like a 'sugar daddy', showering Alice with luxurious gifts in exchange for sex. Added to this, Ezra is clearly identifiable as Philip Roth, and only after reading this book I learned that author Lisa Halliday had indeed been in a relationship with Roth at the age of 20. To write about that very personal stuff is a too clearly aim for cheap success, I think. Anyway, this first part contains enough tantalizing scenes (and I don't mean the sex, which is barely touched upon) to keep reading, certainly as the ‘game of asymmetries' is constantly being displayed.
In the second part we suddenly end up in the world of the American Iraqi Amar Jafaari, who is stuck in an English airport, on his way to his brother in Iraq who has gone missing. The third person narrator of the first part gives way to an interior monologue by Jafaari himself. Through flashbacks he takes us to his childhood in America, the chaos in Iraq after the American invasionof 2003, an endless number of brief philosophical reflections, and his current, rather humiliating experience at the airport where he clearly is mistaken for a potential terrorist. Curiously, there are numerous cross references to the first part (and in retrospect, in that first part, there were numerous cross references to the second one), all packed within the game of asymmetries. But as interesting and well-documented this part may be (a bit too documented in my opinion), Jafaari as a character doesn't really comes to life for me.
The novel closes with the transcript of a short interview with Ezra Blazer, in the meantime a Nobel Prize winner (Roth would have loved this), who talks rather lightly about his life and shamelessly flirts with the female interviewer. And then suddenly there is a passage in which Blazer refers to a young female friend who has written a novel: “About the extent to which we are able to step through the mirror and imagine a life, or rather a consciousness, that largely fills the blind spots in our own existence. It is a novel that at first glance seems to reveal little about the author, but on closer inspection is a veiled portrait of a writer determined to transcend her origins, her privileges, her naivety.” The passage suggests that the second part is a story written by the Alice from the first part. Is this the ultimate key to understand this book? Perhaps, but I doubt it is the only one, and besides, it does not seem to live up to its ambition.
In short, Lisa Halliday certainly has something to offer with her ingenious web of asymmetries and cross references. Yet this book did not convince me. You can compare it with Rachel Cusk's Rachel Cusk Collection: Outline, Transit and Kudos: Cusk also tried something new, but did so in a very thoughtful, and above all, dosed way. Halliday, on the contrary, immediately seems to want to pull off with fireworks, a bit too flashy to my taste, and thus overshooting her goal. This book is a mixed bag to me, but I’d certainly like to see what she’s up to, next. (rating 2.5 stars)
It starts immediately in the first part with the relationship between 25-year-old Alice and 40-year older Ezra Blazer. Alice is a blank slate, a girl who doesn't quite know what to do with her life and leads a shady existence, while Ezra has tons of experience, being a celebrated writer who can afford all the luxuries. So, bingo, a first clear asymmetry! I must say that I felt very uncomfortable reading this first part, especially since old Ezra not just is a womanizer, but rather looks like a 'sugar daddy', showering Alice with luxurious gifts in exchange for sex. Added to this, Ezra is clearly identifiable as Philip Roth, and only after reading this book I learned that author Lisa Halliday had indeed been in a relationship with Roth at the age of 20. To write about that very personal stuff is a too clearly aim for cheap success, I think. Anyway, this first part contains enough tantalizing scenes (and I don't mean the sex, which is barely touched upon) to keep reading, certainly as the ‘game of asymmetries' is constantly being displayed.
In the second part we suddenly end up in the world of the American Iraqi Amar Jafaari, who is stuck in an English airport, on his way to his brother in Iraq who has gone missing. The third person narrator of the first part gives way to an interior monologue by Jafaari himself. Through flashbacks he takes us to his childhood in America, the chaos in Iraq after the American invasionof 2003, an endless number of brief philosophical reflections, and his current, rather humiliating experience at the airport where he clearly is mistaken for a potential terrorist. Curiously, there are numerous cross references to the first part (and in retrospect, in that first part, there were numerous cross references to the second one), all packed within the game of asymmetries. But as interesting and well-documented this part may be (a bit too documented in my opinion), Jafaari as a character doesn't really comes to life for me.
The novel closes with the transcript of a short interview with Ezra Blazer, in the meantime a Nobel Prize winner (Roth would have loved this), who talks rather lightly about his life and shamelessly flirts with the female interviewer. And then suddenly there is a passage in which Blazer refers to a young female friend who has written a novel: “About the extent to which we are able to step through the mirror and imagine a life, or rather a consciousness, that largely fills the blind spots in our own existence. It is a novel that at first glance seems to reveal little about the author, but on closer inspection is a veiled portrait of a writer determined to transcend her origins, her privileges, her naivety.” The passage suggests that the second part is a story written by the Alice from the first part. Is this the ultimate key to understand this book? Perhaps, but I doubt it is the only one, and besides, it does not seem to live up to its ambition.
In short, Lisa Halliday certainly has something to offer with her ingenious web of asymmetries and cross references. Yet this book did not convince me. You can compare it with Rachel Cusk's Rachel Cusk Collection: Outline, Transit and Kudos: Cusk also tried something new, but did so in a very thoughtful, and above all, dosed way. Halliday, on the contrary, immediately seems to want to pull off with fireworks, a bit too flashy to my taste, and thus overshooting her goal. This book is a mixed bag to me, but I’d certainly like to see what she’s up to, next. (rating 2.5 stars)
January 23, 2018
If I am honest, it took me a few pages to get properly into this book, but I am very glad I did because it develops into a fascinating book that is almost more enjoyable on reflection than it is during reading. I think I’ve spent almost as long pondering it as I spent reading it.
The book consists of two novellas followed by a coda. At first sight, the novellas are very different from one another. One tells the story of Alice who works for a New York publisher and wants to be a writer who meets the multi-award winning author Ezra Blazer. Despite decades between their ages, they begin an affair. The second novella switches from third person to first person and tells us the story of Amar who is travelling from the US to Iraq to visit his brother. On a planned stopover at London, he is held back and questioned by immigration officials. This story develops by mixing Amar's reaction to the questioning and flashbacks to his family life.
On the face of it, there aren’t many obvious connections between these two stories.
The coda returns us to Ezra who is now not just a Pulitzer Prize winner, but also a Nobel laureate and is being interviewed for the renowned Desert Island Discs radio show. In the course of the interview, he says something that makes the reader stop and look back at the two novellas.
The greatest fun to be had with the book is to then spend an age wondering whether the connections you have made are the right ones. The book blurb makes it clear that the book is about the asymmetry (imbalances) found in many human relationships: inequities in age, power, talent, wealth, fame, geography, and justice. But the comment from Ezra in his interview suggests it is also about how story-telling (fiction) can help explore these imbalances. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that "fiction reveals truth that reality obscures" (if I had a book blog, I would call it Obscured By Reality, but someone has already grabbed that name!), and, I think, this book is partly about how it can do that.
I say "greatest fun", but that’s just a personal view. I’m not suggesting that the book is poor in any way. I enjoyed both novellas. Perhaps the second was more my taste in style, but then the coda suggests that the differences in style may be deliberate, which, in turn, makes the first one more enjoyable on reflection.
The book will be published early in 2018 and it will be fascinating to discuss it with other readers when it is fully available. I’m not 100% convinced I’ve got the connections right, so I’m keen to explore that with other people.
My thanks to Granta Press for an advance copy sent via NetGalley.
The book consists of two novellas followed by a coda. At first sight, the novellas are very different from one another. One tells the story of Alice who works for a New York publisher and wants to be a writer who meets the multi-award winning author Ezra Blazer. Despite decades between their ages, they begin an affair. The second novella switches from third person to first person and tells us the story of Amar who is travelling from the US to Iraq to visit his brother. On a planned stopover at London, he is held back and questioned by immigration officials. This story develops by mixing Amar's reaction to the questioning and flashbacks to his family life.
On the face of it, there aren’t many obvious connections between these two stories.
The coda returns us to Ezra who is now not just a Pulitzer Prize winner, but also a Nobel laureate and is being interviewed for the renowned Desert Island Discs radio show. In the course of the interview, he says something that makes the reader stop and look back at the two novellas.
The greatest fun to be had with the book is to then spend an age wondering whether the connections you have made are the right ones. The book blurb makes it clear that the book is about the asymmetry (imbalances) found in many human relationships: inequities in age, power, talent, wealth, fame, geography, and justice. But the comment from Ezra in his interview suggests it is also about how story-telling (fiction) can help explore these imbalances. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that "fiction reveals truth that reality obscures" (if I had a book blog, I would call it Obscured By Reality, but someone has already grabbed that name!), and, I think, this book is partly about how it can do that.
I say "greatest fun", but that’s just a personal view. I’m not suggesting that the book is poor in any way. I enjoyed both novellas. Perhaps the second was more my taste in style, but then the coda suggests that the differences in style may be deliberate, which, in turn, makes the first one more enjoyable on reflection.
The book will be published early in 2018 and it will be fascinating to discuss it with other readers when it is fully available. I’m not 100% convinced I’ve got the connections right, so I’m keen to explore that with other people.
My thanks to Granta Press for an advance copy sent via NetGalley.
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