229 pages
English language
Published April 12, 2017
"A mesmerizing, psychologically taut novel about a marriage's end and the secrets we all carry. 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 and search for him, still keeping their split to herself. In her heart, she's not even sure if she wants to find him. Adrift in the wild landscape, she traces the disintegration of their relationship, and discovers she understands less than she thought about the man she used to love. A story of intimacy and infidelity, A Separation is about the gulf that divides us from the lives of others and the narratives we create for ourselves. …
"A mesmerizing, psychologically taut novel about a marriage's end and the secrets we all carry. 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 and search for him, still keeping their split to herself. In her heart, she's not even sure if she wants to find him. Adrift in the wild landscape, she traces the disintegration of their relationship, and discovers she understands less than she thought about the man she used to love. A story of intimacy and infidelity, A Separation is about the gulf that divides us from the lives of others and the narratives we create for ourselves. As the narrator reflects upon her love for a man who may never have been what he appeared, Kitamura propels us into the experience of a woman on the brink of catastrophe. A Separation is a riveting stylistic masterpiece of absence and presence that will leave the reader astonished, and transfixed"--
"A taut, complex portrait of a marriage haunted by secrets, in which a woman finds herself traveling to Greece in search of her missing, estranged husband"--
I wrote about a really amazing scene in this book, in which fantasy, memory, and physicality braid together.
https://bit.ly/SepPhyIntFan
I'll admit it, I like a little plot in my books. If that makes me a bad snobbish literary hipster, then so be it. A Separation is well-written, and I thought an interesting plot was going to develop around Chapter 7, but it never did. We ride around with the main character as she makes no real decisions or choices. We are observers to nothing. There is more description than action. It's an exercise in literary indecisiveness.
