A review by williamc
A Separation by Katie Kitamura

emotional mysterious reflective sad tense

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

 A promotional blurb for A Separation calls it "the literary Gone Girl of 2017," which is a large disservice to the book. This is not a gotcha domestic thriller, and while it is suspenseful, the tension drawn is almost entirely internal: it explores a woman's tensions with her husband, with her lover, with a family whose support creates a scaffold of expectations that, on closer look, might resemble a prison of etiquette. But these same expectations -- whether of predictability or of infidelity (these are not necessarily opposed) -- can be an alluring comfort too. And the uncertainly of all this -- of which reality is truer, of what our narrator is really separated from -- is where the slow suspicions and tension lie. Kitamura does some excellent framing of popular culture references here too that hint at what we are asked to examine. We are primed to look for the guilty in this novel, but we more readily encounter the guilt.