Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday: book review

Asymmetry (2018) is set during the early years of the Iraq War in 2003; in 2008 at the time Barack Obama won the American presidential election; and in 2011. The novel is written in three sections: Folly, Madness, and Ezra Blazer’s Desert Island Discs.

In Folly, in 2003, 25-year-old Alice is an editorial assistant and aspiring writer in New York. Internationally acclaimed Pulitzer Prize winning writer Ezra Blazer meets her in a café and dares her to begin a relationship with him. Ageing at 70, in pain due to several back operations, Ezra is a manipulative old man.

In Madness, Amar Jaafari, an Iraqi-American, having just finished an economics degree, is at Heathrow Airport in 2008 to see his foreign correspondent friend Alastair in England, before he leaves to visit his brother in Kurdistan, Iraq. The British Immigration Office detains him for the weekend. The details are told in the first person, from Amar’s point of view.

The last section is the transcript of an interview with Ezra Blazer, recorded at the BBC Recording House in London on 14 February 2011. He is 78 years old. The program is called Desert Island Discs – Blazer is questioned about the songs and music he would take on a desert island – and the songs are played for the audience.

Blazer is also questioned about his childhood, ‘the origins of his romantic life’ and the beginning of his writing career. Readers learn of the connection between the seemingly two disparate stories of Folly and Madness.

Asymmetry explores uneven, imbalanced, asymmetrical relationships and their power dynamics. It highlights the differences in age, gender, culture, justice, talent, fame, wealth, place of birth, lifestyle, and politics. The writing is simple, yet the issues are complex. Section three is the best, in which the it appears superficially to be about art and music, yet it is also a probing interview; one that reveals the hidden secrets of Ezra Blazer.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

Comments

Pir-E-Kamil - The Perfect Mentor by Umera Ahmed: book review

The Perfect Mentor pbuh (2011) is set in Lahore and Islamabad in Pakistan. The novel commences with Imama Mubeen in medical university. She wants to be an eye specialist. Her parents have arranged for her to marry her first cousin Asjad. Salar Sikander, her neighbour, is 18 years old with an IQ of 150+ and a photographic memory. He has long hair tied in a ponytail. He imbibes alcohol, treats women disrespectfully and is generally a “weird chap” and a rude, belligerent teenager. In the past three years he has tried to commit suicide three times. He tries again. Imama and her brother, Waseem, answer the servant’s call to help Salar. They stop the bleeding from his wrist and save his life. Imama and Asjad have been engaged for three years, because she wants to finish her studies first. Imama is really delaying her marriage to Asjad because she loves Jalal Ansar. She proposes to him and he says yes. But he knows his parents won’t agree, nor will Imama’s parents. That

Flaws in the Glass, a self-portrait by Patrick White: book review

The manuscript, Flaws in the Glass (1981), is Patrick Victor Martindale White’s autobiography. White, born in 1912 in England, migrated to Sydney, Australia, when he was six months old. For three years, at the age of 20, he studied French and German literature at King’s College at the University of Cambridge in England. Throughout his life, he published 12 novels. In 1957 he won the inaugural Miles Franklin Literary Award for Voss, published in 1956. In 1961, Riders in the Chariot became a best-seller, winning the Miles Franklin Literary Award. In 1973, he was the first Australian author to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for The Eye of the Storm, despite many critics describing his works as ‘un-Australian’ and himself as ‘Australia’s most unreadable novelist.’ In 1979, The Twyborn Affair was short-listed for the Booker Prize, but he withdrew it from the competition to give younger writers the opportunity to win the award. His autobiography, Flaws in the Glass

The Beggars' Strike by Aminata Sow Fall: book review

The Beggar’sStrike (1979 in French and 1981 in English) is set in an unstated country in West Africa in a city known only as The Capital. Undoubtedly, Senegalese author Sow Fall writes of her own experiences. It was also encapsulated in the 2000 film, Battu , directed by Cheick Oumar Sissoko from Mali. Mour Ndiaye is the Director of the Department of Public Health and Hygiene, with the opportunity of a distinguished and coveted promotion to Vice-President of the Republic. Tourism has declined and the government blames the local beggars in The Capital. Ndiaye must rid the streets of beggars, according to a decree from the Minister. Ndiaye instructs his department to carry out weekly raids. One of the raids leads to the death of lame beggar, Madiabel, who ran into an oncoming vehicle as he tried to escape, leaving two wives and eight children. Soon after, another raid resulted in the death of the old well-loved, comic beggar Papa Gorgui Diop. Enough is enou

FEAST OR FAMINE

Search This Blog