Good Reads / Community Library Notes
Asymmetry
Lisa Halliday
Review by Priscilla Comen
Asymmetry
Lisa Halliday
Review by Priscilla Comen
Asymmetry, by Lisa Halliday, is the story of Alice and Ezra. She’s twenty-five, he’s much, much older. He’s an award -winning author (a White House medal and a Pulitzer), she works for a publishing house. They tease each other; he buys her cookies, gives her a glass of white wine in the shower. They have fun in bed; he calls her phone constantly and often hangs up. When he goes to his country home to write, she misses him. When they go to his country home together, she swims laps in his pool
When he has a pace maker surgically implanted, she worries until he recovers; they do things in bed that make him gasp with pleasure. They get take-out Chinese food, they watch the Red Sox baseball games on television. His back hurts and she brings him ice cream bars. The Red Sox win. Author Halliday creates a real life drama with realistic people. Ezra pays off Alice’s college loan; Alice is called for jury duty and sits in the waiting room for hours, hears other people’s names called, never her’s.
In the second section, we find Ezra as a young man being detained at the New York airport on his way to visit his brother in Iraq. Stopping over in London, he volunteers at a center for disabled children. We learn facts about rare diseases and the empathy he feels for the children. He leaves London to meet his brother and parents in Iraq. His brother, Sami, is a doctor of corrective surgery. Author Halliday philosophizes about the war and terrible conditions in Iraq. “It can’t go on forever can it?” asks Ezra’s brother.
Ezra returns to America to work on his PhD. His friend, Zaid, is kidnapped, and after a ransom is paid, his body is found on his front porch in Iraq. Ezra realizes that he, too, could be a candidate for kidnapping since his family is in high positions in Iraq. Author Halliday has won the Whiting Award for fiction. She makes us think and weep.
Find this excellent novel on the new fiction shelf of your Mendocino Community Library.
When he has a pace maker surgically implanted, she worries until he recovers; they do things in bed that make him gasp with pleasure. They get take-out Chinese food, they watch the Red Sox baseball games on television. His back hurts and she brings him ice cream bars. The Red Sox win. Author Halliday creates a real life drama with realistic people. Ezra pays off Alice’s college loan; Alice is called for jury duty and sits in the waiting room for hours, hears other people’s names called, never her’s.
In the second section, we find Ezra as a young man being detained at the New York airport on his way to visit his brother in Iraq. Stopping over in London, he volunteers at a center for disabled children. We learn facts about rare diseases and the empathy he feels for the children. He leaves London to meet his brother and parents in Iraq. His brother, Sami, is a doctor of corrective surgery. Author Halliday philosophizes about the war and terrible conditions in Iraq. “It can’t go on forever can it?” asks Ezra’s brother.
Ezra returns to America to work on his PhD. His friend, Zaid, is kidnapped, and after a ransom is paid, his body is found on his front porch in Iraq. Ezra realizes that he, too, could be a candidate for kidnapping since his family is in high positions in Iraq. Author Halliday has won the Whiting Award for fiction. She makes us think and weep.
Find this excellent novel on the new fiction shelf of your Mendocino Community Library.