My Amazon and Goodreads review of Asymmetry (Rating 3): A Self-Referential Title for an Uneven Book — I’m baffled by the advanced buzz for Lisa Halliday’s Asymmetry, a three-part novel with uneven writing. The first section, about a young woman’s relationship with a famous older writer, said to be based on Philip Roth, no doubt explains the reviewers’ swooning. But while the Roth-like character is thankfully not portrayed as a creep (I’m an avid Roth fan), the woman is a cipher — inert and uninteresting. The power asymmetry in the unconnected second part, which confronts America’s war in Iraq, is more complex and promising, but undeveloped. It needs a book of its own. Part three, a fictitious interview with the writer, has extended riffs on the literary life that are worth perusing. However, the time is better spent reading real interviews with, and books written by, the authors one admires.
