Name: ASYMMETRY.
ISBN: 9781783783625

LISA. HALLIDAY

ASYMMETRY.

Lisa Halliday

A TIME and NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 BOOK of the YEAR * New York Times Notable Book and Times Critic’s Top Book of 2018 NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2018 BY * Elle * Bustle * Kirkus Reviews * Lit Hub* NPR * O, The Oprah Magazine * Shelf Awareness “Asymmetry is extraordinary...Halliday has written, somehow all at once, a transgressive roman a clef, a novel of ideas and a politically engaged work of metafiction.” —Alice Gregory, The New York Times Book Review “A brilliant and complex examination of power dynamics in love and war.” —Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal “A scorchingly intelligent first novel...Asymmetry will make you a better reader, a more active noticer. It hones your senses.” —Parul Seghal, The New York Times 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 relations: 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.

A Novel

Asymmetry

Can’t believe it’s taken me so long to read this. Will be a favorite read this year. Beautiful, thoughtful. 

Sarah Erle

Kristen Claiborn

There’s a group I follow on Facebook called “What Even Is the Point Of This Book?” I get a kick out of the questions and answers found within this group, and after finishing this one, I feel like I understand better now why that group exists. I just didn’t like it…at all. 
	The first line says, “Alice was beginning to get very tired of all this sitting by herself with nothing to do: every so often she tried again to read the book in her lap, but it was made up almost exclusively of long paragraphs, and no quotations whatsoever, and what is the point of a book, thought Alice, that does not have any quotation marks?” You know what Alice, I agree with you. What is the point? That first line alone is ironic enough, but this entire book is made up of paragraphs that span six pages. The second part contains no quotation marks. I found it droll, or, as my husband said, it’s just a bunch of droll bullshit. Truly. This book had so much endless babble, I found myself going cross-eyed and wishing I had an old Archie comic just to break the pointless monotony. 
	To be fair, I enjoyed the first part, “Folly.” The dynamic between Ezra and Alice was at least well developed, and this section didn’t include as much of the pointless paragraphs, plus it included quotations marks, so that was nice. “Madness,” however, was just a big ol’ mess. I almost thought to include an insanely long and mindless paragraph concerning time, but that would have made this review insanely long, so I’m leaving it out. In short: “Folly” good, “Madness” not so good. 
	This book is listed as one of the best books of 2018 on a large number of lists. I don’t get it. I read a large number of books, and I can promise this one is only appealing to the most erudite, possibly pretentious, readers out there. That’s fine. But the average reader isn’t going to seek this one out or enjoy it. That’s not why we read. We read to be entertained, to lose ourselves in fiction. This is not that book. Am I outing myself as a less-than cultivated reader? Possibly, but I’d still prefer to be entertained by good storytelling rather than bored out of my mind.

A TIME and NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 BOOK of the YEAR * New York Times Notable Book and Times Critic’s Top Book of 2018 NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2018 BY * Elle * Bustle * Kirkus Reviews * Lit Hub* NPR * O, The Oprah Magazine * Shelf Awareness The bestselling and critically acclaimed debut novel by Lisa Halliday, hailed as “extraordinary” by The New York Times, “a brilliant and complex examination of power dynamics in love and war” by The Wall Street Journal, and “a literary phenomenon” by The New Yorker. Told in three distinct and uniquely compelling sections, Asymmetry explores the imbalances that spark and sustain many of our most dramatic human relations: 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 “a transgressive roman a clef, a novel of ideas, and a politically engaged work of metafiction” (The New York Times Book Review), and a “masterpiece” in the original sense of the word” (The Atlantic). Lisa Halliday’s novel will captivate any reader with while also posing arresting questions about the very nature of fiction itself.

Jenna

I was thinking as I was reading it that I really loved it, the writing and the story, but I didn’t totally get what was a big deal about it. I had to google it afterwards only to realize that I failed to pick up on a pretty major reveal 🤦🏻‍♀️ sometimes I think I’m too dumb for ~literature~ because DUH how did I miss that!!! I even noticed some of the details but didn’t put things together! After googling though, it was like, OH, wow, that was pretty great actually, even though my apparent bird brain missed it.

If you’ve read this one, what did you think? Apparently it took the book world by storm a few years ago. I kind of see why - it’s pretty neat. I can’t say much more than that bc it’s something you have to let someone see for themselves (or not see and find out after by looking it up lol). I really loved this one in the end!

nina

the prose was nice in a lot of parts. restrained yet evocative. revolves around an extremely creepy old man which was interesting but hard to digest at times.

Erifili G

(Goodreads' rating system fails me again so pretend I'm giving this 3.5 stars. Which I'd usually round up to 4 but I feel like 3 should do for this one.)

This was a very interesting and unconventional read, by Lisa Halliday. Let me start by saying that I think this is a great debut novel, and I would most likely be interested in seeing what Halliday writes next. What she did with this book was somewhat of a literary experiment, and after finishing it I realize how intelligent it actually was. But, emphasis on *after finishing it*, because there's so many things to uncover in this book that I had to read quite a lot of reviews to get it all.

The author has a very peculiar style when it comes to her characters and stories, and I feel like at many points, you have to read between the lines to find the significance of a story. This is sometimes not the best thing when you're reading fiction, so I found myself skimming through some parts of the second story in the book. 

The first and third parts, however, are what caught my attention the most while reading Asymmetry. I found the characters of Alice and Ezra very intriguing, and their relationship quite refreshing in a way due to the lack of dragging detail; it was very direct and to the point. The third part of the book, a radio interview with Ezra, was also very interesting because it finally goes deeper on one of the main characters, uncovering his disappointing but unsurprising personality traits. I found his character especially to be very well written, so kudos to Lisa Halliday for writing such unique characters.

I found the second story of the book to have dragged a lot more, due to all the flashbacks and memories of the story's main character, and those are the parts that I ended up skimming through after a point. However, his story was still very important and captivating at parts, as it had quite a clear message to pass to the reader. I wish some parts of it would have been clearer, though, as I found myself having to really think about why some details were there in the first place, and what they meant (because surely they must have meant something); when he's at the airport, for example, and he describes a blonde woman that really sounds like Alice from the first part of the book, crying in the detention center. I have absolutely no idea what that part meant and why it was in the story, so if anyone would like to enlighten me please do feel free.

In addition to that, this is probably due to my own superficial at times reading of fiction, but I only came to realize that the second story of the book was actually the short novel written by Alice, after finishing the book and seeing a reviewer mention it. Certainly a very modern take, but I would have appreciated some slightly more obvious sign of that; and in that case, I'm not sure why would Alice would make herself a character crying at the airport in her short novel.

This is more of an unstructured stream of thoughts that I had during the reading process than it is a review, but this book certainly gives you quite a lot to think about. A pretty quick read but with complex underlying messages, and very unique characters paired with a refreshing writing style.

Gary Homewood

A young editor in NY has an affair with an aging writer. An Iraqi economist is held at London Heathrow immigration. A coda: the aging writer is interviewed on Desert Island Discs, and is a lot less likable.

Engagingly written and observed: literature, relationships, politics, culture, life stories. Clever, occasionally funny, and contemporary. I'm sure there were subtle thematic and structural links, but I missed them. Great writing, but weirdly left wanting a bit more closure/pay off.