ASYMMETRY by LISA HALLIDAY (2018)

When I finished this book, I slammed it down and said, "What the hell?" It seemed to me to be senseless, pointless, meaningless. It is by far my least favorite of the nine 2018 books I have read, taking the advice of "Best of...." lists and already-given awards. If you think you might want to read this novel, don't read the rest of the review, as it contains major spoilers. Just know that you would be reading it against my advice.

The novel is divided into three sections. The first, taking up 123 pages, or almost half the book, chronicles the romance between Mary Alice, a young woman in her early 20s, and a much-older award-winning author. Much of it is dialogue, tending to show that the young woman is allowing herself to be subservient to her older lover, following his directions as to when to come and when to go, reading the books he recommends, fetching and carrying for him, sitting by his bedside when he is ill, and so forth. It ends abruptly, seemingly in mid-story.

The second section is the story of the American-raised Amar who is on his way to visit his brother in Kurdistan. Detained in the Heathrow airport, he remembers past visits to his birth country and reflects on the different paths he and his brother have followed. A goodly bit of this section is also dialogue, primarily between Amar and customs agents.

So how do these two low-key and borderline-boring sections relate to each other? I trusted that the final section would provide an epiphany. Section three is couched as a transcript of the BBC Radio show "Desert Island Disks," wherein a famous person (the author from the first section) talks about the music he would bring with him if stranded on a desert island. He indicates through hints that the story of Amar is a novel written by a lover who left him (obviously Mary Alice). At the end of the interview, the author endeavors to entice the married female interviewer to go out with him. He is obviously a narcissistic jerk.

But why should a reader even care about any part of this disconnected mess? Why was it named one of the best novels of 2018 by numerous sites, including the New York Times? What did I miss? I resorted to researching various reviews and articles on the internet, and learned that the author, in her younger days, had been the lover of author Philip Roth (who is now deceased). Roth, one of the most honored authors of his generation, is well known for basing his novels on autobiographical material, so the first section of Lisa Halliday's novel is universally presumed to be an autobiographical account of her love affair with Roth, especially since Roth's divorced second wife had previously written a memoir which portrayed Roth in an unflattering light.

The second section of Halliday's novel is apparently her reaction to her lover's advice to write what she knows and has experienced, as he did. I can't figure out if the lackluster quality of that section means that Halliday realizes that she does better when she follows her controlling lover's advice, or if she thinks she is proving that she can disregard his advice.

The third section serves to let reader's into the secret connection of the first two sections.

I still wonder why I should be impressed by this book. I guess it's a bit clever. I could see Halliday was aiming to be clever after reading only the first five or six pages. I'm wondering if critics praised it because they were all a bit jealous of Roth and, of course, human nature dictates that we all are secretly a little pleased to hear that a lauded person is in reality a son of a bitch.