Asymmetry is a Strange but Wonderful Read

Months before the recent death of the inimitable Philip Roth I had been hearing rumors and reading reviews about a highly regarded new novel from a debut author named Lisa Halliday. Readers were left to surmise that this kind of sophistication from a new author was surprising, even unheard of, but that is just silly. Ms. Halliday has worked in the publishing industry for many years. She knew people who knew people. And, it seems, she once had a powerful mentor in Philip Roth.

 

 

Readers are often admonished not to make the mistake of attaching an author's story to his or her biography yet we do it all the same. In the case of "Asymmetry," Ms. Halliday seems to be playing both ends against the middle. She assures interviewers that her novel is only loosely based upon her long relationship with Mr. Roth and yet...

 

Let me say right now, it doesn't matter. This book is gorgeously written but it seems as if we are reading two novellas by equally skilled but different authors. The first, "Folly," is a lovingly told tale of a May-December love affair between Alice, a twenty-something editor and aspiring writer, and Ezra, a renowned, multi award winning author in his seventies who is facing the indignities of aging with less than good grace.

 

Their time together is filled with laughter. They are surprisingly compatible, each with an encyclopedic knowledge of baseball about which they are both fanatical. Ezra teaches Alice about music and writers she must read. He is generous though he expects Alice to run about doing errands at all times of the day and night as if she were his assistant. He is secretive about their relationship with his friends but grows to trust her as his health needs become more obvious. They discuss ending it, for her sake, so she can move on, but they actually are enjoying themselves.

 

Told in the third person, the author narrates from on high, observing, always acutely observing. Then, suddenly, without warning, we are in a first person tale, "Madness," of a young Iraqi-American who is being detained at Heathrow airport for no good reason except perhaps, his name, Jafaari. While Mr. Jafaari is made to wait for hours without explanation we learn his entire backstory, how he came to hold multiple passports, that he's a student of economics, that his brother, Sami, is a doctor who chose to stay in the middle east where he could do the most good, and never for a moment would you think that the voice is anything other than a young man in the throes of an everyday injustice visited upon those with certain names or coloring.

 

Thinking about the meaning of the title, asymmetry, we begin to understand that this novel is, among other things, an examination of one-sided relationships, the power struggle that ensues when one member of the duo holds more clout than the other and the sense of insecurity that is engendered by the duality.

 

This is an altogether fabulous novel, funny, smart, and unusual. Lisa Halliday may have had a leg up in the publishing world but she had to make it on her own smarts and there's no doubt that she did just that.