A Separation

A Novel

De: Katie Kitamura

Narrado por: Katherine Waterston

A PBS NewsHour/New York Times Book Club Pick

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK

Named a best book of the year by the New York Times, NPR, Huffington Post, The A.V. Club, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Guardian, Refinery29, Town & Country, Harper's Bazaar, NYLON, BookRiot.

“Kitamura’s prose gallops, combining Elena Ferrante-style intricacies with the tensions of a top-notch whodunit.” —Elle

This is her story. About the end of her marriage. About what happened when Christopher went missing and she went to find him. These are her secrets, this is what happened...

A young woman has agreed with her faithless husband: it's time for them to separate. For the moment it's a private matter, a secret between the two of them. As she begins her new life, she gets word that Christopher has gone missing in a remote region in the rugged south of Greece; she reluctantly agrees to go look for him, still keeping their split to herself. In her heart, she's not even sure if she wants to find him. As her search comes to a shocking breaking point, she discovers she understands less than she thought she did about her relationship and the man she used to love.

A searing, suspenseful story of intimacy and infidelity, A Separation lays bare what divides us from the inner lives of others. With exquisitely cool precision, Katie Kitamura propels us into the experience of a woman on edge, with a fiercely mesmerizing story to tell.

Sorry

Monotonous reader certainly doesn't improve on the very, very long story. What a dreary protagonist: unloving, uncaring, self-absorbed, uninteresting. Save your credits.

The mystery is our life

Not a lot of plot action but an illuminating read. The narration is slow even and meditative, but I felt it matched the inner voice of the character.

The narrator should stick to bedtime stories

The narrator sounded like she was going to sleep or was trying to put me asleep. The story has a lot of introspection and very little action so the listless monotone of the narrator made it hard to focus. I would start thinking of other things and have to rewind. I only continued listening because I was interested in the story.

Terrible narration

The story intrigued me but it was hard to get past the awful narration.
I often find this a problem on Audible and now pay more attention to the performance in the samples before committing to purchase.

Not a Thriller, but Still Great

This book is billed in a number of places as a literary thriller, and it definitely does have a good degree of mystery and intrigue but no in the sense that you might expect from a thriller. So, if that's what you're looking for, something more action-oriented with a crazy plot this is not your book.

That being said, this book is excellent in many ways and is definitely worth a credit. The voicing is superb and the narrator does a great job of diving into Kitamura's hypnotic tone. It is incredibly slow though, I was playing this at X1.4 speed and it was ideal but when I went down to normal speed it sounded ridiculous.

It is a literary exploration of grief, marriage, identity and infidelity. Kitamura is a master at exploring her character's (only one real character to speak of - the protagonist) emotions. She does so subtly, very subtly; tip-toeing around the immense tension and conflict inherent in this books primary situation. She doesn't confront the conflict head on, and that's where some listeners may be put-off, waiting for a big reveal or a titanic moment where it all clicks.

It doesn't click plot-wise like a twisty thriller would, but it did hit me hard somewhere more subterranean, maybe spiritual, maybe existential.