I recognize that Lisa Halliday’s Asymmetry is a polarizing novel, that has received both significant praise (see NY Times Top 10 Books of 2018) as well as scorn from those who could not get into it for a variety reasons I understand. That said, there have been few books this year that have impressed me as much both in the quality in writing but the audacity in its choices in form and how these choices made the book’s thematic explorations that much more poignant for me as a reader.Asymmetry is a book told in three parts.
The first follows Alice, a twenty-something editor who begins an affair with renowned author Ezra Blazer, who is loosely (maybe not so loosely) based on Philip Roth, who Halliday has admitted to having a romantic relationship with in the early 2000s. This is definitely the hook of the book and I imagine many rushed to read the section eager to get the dirt on Roth’s sexual escapades. But we get so much more. Halliday certainly presents a famous author able to use his power and wealth to engender romantic feelings from Alice and at times this power is exerted manipulatively and is expressed condescendingly, but she also presents a very tender, genuine relationship, where Blazer cares deeply for Alice and desperately fears losing her. Halliday is not interested in a hit job but offering an intimate insight into the author, both personally, but also his determination and single mindedness as an author, an insight Halliday stresses in her interviews.
The second part feels incongruous (asymmetrical one could say) and takes its time to catch the reader. Amar is an American-Iraqi travelling back to Iraq in the late 2000s to visit his brother and is held by authorities during a transfer in London. We quickly get taken back through Amar’s past, from being born over American airspace to his many returns to Iraq, witnessing first hand the destruction of the country as a result of the 2003 war that claimed to seek democracy but delivered chaos and death. We get grizzly accounts of the havoc as Amir recounts how he got to where he stood, suffering further indignity at the hands of the power that has destroyed his ancestral home and caused so much pain for his family. While the first section at first appears to be the more intimate and close to Halliday’s self, it is Amar’s story that is told in the first person, offering a depiction of pain and suffering that Alice’s romantic heart-break cannot.
The third part, the coda, is the transcript of an interview on the BBC Desert Island Discs, where a famous person (Ezra Blazer reappearing) offers up their musical desires if they were stranded on a desert island while retelling their life story. While meant to tie things up, Halliday is quite subtle in doing so, allowing Blazer to only give passing insights into the writing process, extolling authors to not force their characters together if not realistic but let their individual stories follow their own destinies. Blazer remains audacious, still eager for romantic hook up, but Halliday does not punish Blazer (or Roth) too much for his lechery, having awarded him the Nobel Prize for Literature (that Roth never won despite coveting it for so long).
So the question then is does Halliday pull off this very ambitious novel that asks the reader to fill in so many blanks, to find the connections, to create the meanings that would allow Asymmetry to exist as a cohesive novel. For me it does and I believe that partly this has to do with the novel situating itself in a time period that was incredibly formative to me, the early to late 2000s. The moment that struck me most was when I was forced to contrast visceral reactions I had to two moments, one in each of the two parts.
The first was an account of Alice and Ezra watching the now infamous American League Championship Series between the Yankees and the Red Sox in 2004, where the Sox came back from three games to none down to upset the Bronx Bombers and eventually go on to win the World Series. Alice, a devout Red Sox fan, is intensely watching the late innings of Game 5 when Ezra asks her to fetch a series of things from the neighbourhood store to deal with some physical discomfort he was experiencing. Alice becomes bitter and when forced to converse with Blazer after she returns she loses her patience. Being a Red Sox fan, who also remembers these moments, I was vicariously angry along with Alice, furious at Blazer’s selfishness, his lack of consideration for what was important to Alice.
The second moment is when Amar is on one of his visits to Iraq between 2005 and 2007. He is surrounded by the bloodshed, the anger of a people boiling over, but also a people fearful to carry on with their lives, worried about kidnappings, bombs, living. I felt a moment of shame both because this dire moment contrasted so much with the triviality of missing a few innings of a playoff game but also because my visceral reaction was greater for Alice’s misfortune than Amar’s. As someone who was actively involved in the anti-war movement in 2003, organizing massive protests to try to stop the invasion, how was it that I felt so distanced from the bloodshed. If the war and its consequences felt like such an abstraction for me, how would others less involved weigh their feelings? Was it just as Ezra insinuates in his interview that war for Americans (full disclosure I’m Canadian) is just a game, even for those opposed to the conflict?
For me this contrast perfectly encapsulates the asymmetry that Halliday is trying to depict, the stark incongruousness of the experiences that are nonetheless experiences that exist side by side in the current moment of humanity. There are likely several other asymmetry's to be explored here but for me this reading moment sunk me a little and made me appreciate what Halliday was trying to do.
A few more thoughts.
I imagine that if you have not read Philip Roth this book may not connect with you. I am hardly a Rothophile but I have read enough of his work, seen a few documentaries, that the hook of the first story drew me in immediately. I could hear Roth’s cadence in Blazer’s words. I could see his flaws (very much present in his work) in Blazer’s actions. Halliday’s portrayal is neither hitjob nor hagiography so maybe not the kind of hot gossip some hoped, but it is insightful into the mind of an author whose influence continued to permeate in American letters well after his star as a writer had begun to fade. If one does not have a relationship with Roth's work then maybe this fascination does not exist.
Secondly, I also understand why for some the structural choices made by Halliday does not work. I personally am not someone that impressed with experimental fiction, tending to prefer straightforward narratives with deep thematic explorations and emotional punch. Halliday manages to cover these as well as offer a formalistic choice that asks readers to work for meaning, to impose their own narrative structure. That may not work for everyone and maybe the time period the stories are set in helped me do so in ways others could not.
Lastly, the three books I enjoyed most this year (Sally Rooney’s Normal People, Rebecca Makkai’s The Great Believers, and Asymmetry) are fantastic examples of a stripped down writing styles that deliver a lot without being bogged down with overly ornate or descriptive prose. I do not know if this is a new trend, nor do I want to lessen the quality of writing from those with more verbose and adjective filled styles (like Chabon or Whitehead) but I find it refreshing and speaks to how powerful language can be without overdoing it.
Anyways, great work and looking forward to seeing what is next for Halliday.
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