Asymmetry Audiobook By Lisa Halliday cover art

Asymmetry

A Novel

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Asymmetry

By: Lisa Halliday
Narrated by: Candace Thaxton, Arthur Morey, Fiona Hardingham, Aden Hakimi
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Soon to be a major motion picture starring Richard Gere and Diana Silvers.

A Time and New York TimesTop 10 Book of the Year * New York Times Notable Book and Times Critic’s Top Book of the Year

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF The Year BY * Elle * Bustle * Kirkus Reviews * LitHub * NPR * Oprah Daily

The bestselling and critically acclaimed debut novel by Lisa Halliday is “a brilliant and complex examination of power dynamics in love and war” (The Wall Street Journal).

Told in two distinct and uniquely compelling sections, Asymmetry explores the imbalances that spark and sustain many of our most dramatic human relations: inequities in age, power, talent, wealth, fame, geography, and justice. The first section, “Folly,” tells the story of Alice, a young American editor, and her relationship with the famous and much older writer Ezra Blazer. A tender and exquisite account of an unexpected romance that takes place in New York during the early years of the Iraq War, “Folly” also explores Alice’s artistic aspirations and growing frustrations of living in Ezra’s shadow.

By contrast, “Madness” is narrated by Amar, an Iraqi-American man who, on his way to visit his brother in Kurdistan, is detained by immigration officers and spends the last weekend of 2008 in a holding room in Heathrow. These two seemingly disparate stories gain resonance as their perspectives interact and overlap, with yet new implications for their relationship revealed in an unexpected coda.

A stunning debut from a rising literary star, Asymmetry is “a transgressive roman a clef, a novel of ideas, and a politically engaged work of metafiction” (The New York Times Book Review), and a “literary phenomenon” (The New Yorker). Lisa Halliday’s novel will captivate any reader with while also posing arresting questions about the very nature of fiction itself. Coming of Age Family Life Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Emotionally Gripping
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This is a wonderful book told by three different people. Each section is a story on to itself though there seems to be a link between the 3. I especially liked the middle section which is about a young man stuck in the London Airport because of his origins. The narrator has a beautifully modulated voice and his story is heart wrenching without being maudlin.

The first and third sections are also quite good though I found those two stories (which are more closely linked than the 2nd) of less interest. The first is about a young woman's affair with a well known writer who is much older than she is. Some of the descriptive passages are quite beautiful and it is not hard, on some level, to sympathize with the protagonist's sense of futility
and loneliness but it doesn't have the same relevance as the 2nd section.

great book

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I love the way this author weaves her deeper thoughts into the everyday stories of her characters. The first story took me a while to get into. I was frustrated that Mary Alice didn’t seem to have a voice. I’m happy I kept going. Very meaningful and thoughtful work. Thank you Lisa Halliday!

Wow. Took me a bit to get into it, but glad I kept listening

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I think this may be the first review I wrote before I finished a book. I love the story premise and am very intrigued but I cannot follow the audio and it’s even linear. It jumps in time and place with such suddenness I get totally confused and lost. My guess is that the written book has line breaks or something to indicate this and it just doesn’t work in audio. Sadly, I’m going to have to return it.

This is not a fair review. Doesn’t work in audio format.

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One of the best novels I've heard on Audible. Extremely well-written and thought provoking. Amazing how the author made me care for, and have insights into Alice.

Excellent

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As someone who did an MA on Philip Roth, I was tickled by the Roth-like character in the first part. but then comes the totally detached second part which perhaps it would take a PhD in English tot be able to see as appropriate for this novel, and in the third part, which features the roth character again, the narration is by someone who sound extremely un-rothlike. also, the fact that this character was awarded the nobel prize in lit--something that roth himself said would never happen, was disturbing to me.

Too asmmetrical

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