While I am personally tired of old-man-writer-takes-young-and-impressionable-mistress kinds of stories, particularly in today’s climate that is so focused on (rightfully) exposing the ugliness and imbalance of these relationships in real life, I was nonetheless very impressed by Halliday’s writing and especially taken with the second half of the book. An odd and intriguing read.

Lisa Halliday has created a work of stunning originality. Consisting of three distinct sections, Asymmetry presents more of a work of concept than either plot or character. The three plots have subtle connections that the reader sometimes has to work at discovering. The first, Folly, concerns the May/December romance of Alice, a young editor living in an upper west side apartment, and her relationship with Ezra Blazer, a much older, prominent author who guides her senses of self and taste. Madness, the center story, at first seeming to be totally unconnected, concerns Amar, an American born of Iraqi immigrants, a victim of racial profiling who finds his attempts to spend a lengthy layover in London stymied by NAS (think TSA in Britain). Amar's story is told in retrospect as he waits out the hours in a holding room in Heathrow. The two stories are separated by five years, but there is a tenuous connection between the two characters, so subtle, it could be missed entirely. In the final section, Ezra tells an interviewer what music he would choose to have with him should be become stranded on a desert isle, and embellishes his biography around his choices. Each of these elements could stand alone, the first two being the length of novellas, but together, they make for compelling, exciting reading