Book 23 - There's Simply Too Much Subject Matter to Neatly Encompass It All in One Snappy Heading

Title: Asymmetry Author: Lisa Halliday Genre: Sociopolitical POV fiction

Okay. So here is what we're gonna do. This book is split into three related but highly varied parts, so I'm going to review them as such.

Ready, Set - GO!

Part 1: Alice and Ezra - A Courtship

Told in the third person from Alice's perspective, this part of the novel follows Alice and Ezra's unsettling but seemingly harmless relationship. She's young and wide-eyed, and he's old and well-established. At first I was wary of the whole thing turning weird, especially given how controlling and pretentious Ezra comes across, but Halliday depicts a relationship that, while not perfect, is definitely tender and adventurous and interesting. The minutia of the relationship is something that struck me as very real, like weird nonsense nicknames that somehow catch on and stick (Mealy Potatoes in Alice's case, Shelby in mine). The writing itself is very engaging in its brevity. It feels as though the words are a framework, the mouth of the cave, and the real story is what's happening in the abyss between the slats, the space inside the cave.

But this section isn't just Alice and Ezra growing into a relationship - oh no. The narrative is interrupted (framed? more frames??) by excerpts of all kinds that sort of follow the parallel social and political timeline. Maybe there are also parallels in terms of power dynamics in politics VS their relationship. Maybe there is a whole lot more that Halliday is trying to convey that I'm just not getting. The truth is, I don't suuuuper care about anything that isn't Alice and Ezra. I mean, I commend the author for being so versatile. She just bangs out these press releases, newspaper clippings, historical documents - very impressive, especially for an appreciative audience. But that's not me. For me, these breaks worked against the story because with my embarrassingly spotty grip on historical fact, the interludes are disorienting and a-nicer-word-for-boring-as-fuck.

Part 2: Amar, the Airport, and Other Musings

In the second section, we follow Amar, an Iraqi-American economist being detained at an airport for absolutely no good reason. As he waits and waits for something to happen at the airport, we ride along for his thoughts about pretty much everything. At first, I really liked the introspection. Here, again, I heartily commend the author; part two is basically the antithesis of part one, with Amar giving us a huge amount of long, thought-out and re-thought-out content. Nothing brief there - and that's not bad! It's actually quite beautiful, but tends to get reaaally tiring to read/slog through. The author doesn't use quotations to denote dialogue in this part either, so a few times I had to backtrack to puzzle out if someone was speaking, or if it was the nature of Amar's thoughts, or what the heck was happening.

Part 3: Ezra's Blah Blah Blah

Part three. Further confirmation that Ezra is a hoighty-toity pretentious prick. Maybe I was just worn out from the dizzying ride of flashbacks with Amar, or maybe I just relate more to Alice. Either way, this part was a struuuugle. Halliday takes us through an interview with Ezra about his musical tastes, which err on the side of old, pretentious, and boring. Not, in my opinion, a good way to end the book, especially because over the course of the interview I just came to dislike Ezra even more than I did at the very very start.

And So...

...should you read this book? I think so. It's not too long, and it's definitely something different. And different is good - right??

Rating: 📝📝📝 /5