LITERARY FICTION
ASYMMETRY by Lisa Halliday
(Granta £14.99) AMERICAN Lisa Halliday hasn’t concealed the fact that Ezra Blazer, the novelist star of her debut, is based on her ex-lover, Philip Roth. But Blazer isn’t the heart of this book.
It’s the young Iraqi-American economist Amar, whose first-person narrative comprises the second of Asymmetry’s three artfully unequal acts, who is its most absorbing presence.
Detained at Heathrow while en route to Kurdistan, Amar reflects on his life, faith and the madness of war — none of which apparently have any bearing on the sections concerning Blazer. But the links, though oblique, are there.
Halliday is a dazzling ventriloquist, as a ‘transcript’ of Blazer’s Desert Island Discs appearance reveals. But it’s her ability to inhabit Amar’s consciousness so fully that’s most impressive and, perhaps, the central point of her novel — as Blazer observes, fiction is one way we can get beyond the limits of our own lives to imagine the realities of others’ worlds.
LOVE AFTER LOVE by Alex Hourston
(Faber £12.99) THERAPIST Nancy Jensen seemingly has it all: a lovely house in the right part of London, three well brought-children and a gym-toned husband blessed with endless understanding and impeccable taste. Nevertheless, she has risked it all for the past two years to pursue an affair with her colleague Adam: skinny, furrowed and with a receding hairline.
Hourston obviously wishes to emphasise the blindness of love, but there’s nothing wrong with Nancy’s eyesight: her hungry gaze — whether that of the smitten lover or the anxious mother — misses nothing.
The accumulation of forensic detail, which is at first rather addictive, eventually teeters on the brink of too much: it feels as though no outfit, face or soft furnishing is left unappraised.
But stick with it — starting out in psychological thriller territory, this gradually turns into something more reflective and emotionally satisfying.
SAL by Mick Kitson
(Canongate £12.99) THIS debut by Mick Kitson, formerly one half of Eighties pop band The Senators, has been the source of much publishing industry excitement — and with good cause.
Our narrator is Sal: 13 years old and with an impressive array of survival skills gleaned from YouTube and the SAS Survival Handbook.
She’s about to put them to the test — having killed her abusive stepfather, she takes off with her ten- year- old half-sister, Peppa, to the Highlands.
Together the two catch fish, trap rabbits and brew tea made with hoarded McDonald’s UHT milk. But when Peppa falls ill, help arrives in an unexpected form: a septuagenarian doctor who left the old East Germany to become a hippie in Sixties England.
It’s testament to the strength of Kitson’s writing that none of this seems a stretch, and although his characters’ suffering is conveyed lightly, the complexity of their lives is never compromised (nor, impressively, are the limits of Sal’s understanding).
Powered by Sal’s innate sense of justice and her fierce love for her sweary, showstealing sister, this original, bittersweet tale effortlessly beguiles.