Like the stuff of a Woody Allen movie, in the first part of Asymmetry, a young editor meets a famous elderly author and immediately begins a relationship with him. Besides being taken care of financially (Ezra gives Alice money for a wardrobe and school), it's always a curiosity what a young adult would see in an aging senior. Grandfather complex? Seeking comfort, security, no pressure? Likely. In Folly, Alice and Ezra's stories are so well written, I could see they had a somewhat sweet relationship.
I thought when author Lisa Halliday compared an orthopedic bed to feeling like fudge, that was aptly described. "His mattress was made of special orthopedic material that made her feel as though she were slowly sinking into a giant slab of fudge."
Another description I could see come to life was "A helicopter changed its direction like a locust shooed by giant fingers slicing through the sky."
In Madness, Part 2, Amar, an Iraqi American, is detained at a Heathrow airport while on his way to Kurdistan to see his brother. While he waits in the holding room, his narration is filled with vivid memories of his brother, life in Iraq, and a Catholic live-in girlfriend in New York that he didn't tell his parents about.
An interesting observation Amar makes is with the men playing military issue cards with Saddam Husein as the ace of spades, his sons clubs and hearts, and Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash the five of hearts. 13 of the cards had a black oval resembling a hooded head like the grim reaper. "And yet it was these cards, I thought, as the man nearest me laid down a flush - the cards without faces - that had the most humanizing effect. Maybe because their featurelessness more steadily suggested that you, too, could have been born Adil Abdallah Mahdi (deuce of diamonds) or Ugla Abid Saqr al-Kubaysi (deuce of clubs) or Ghazi Hammud al-Ubaydi (deuce of hearts) or Rashid Taan Kazim (deuce of spades). If only your parents had taken a later flight. If only your soul had sparked into being on a different continent, a different hemisphere, a different day."
There but for the grace of God go I.
In Madness, Part 2, Amar, an Iraqi American, is detained at a Heathrow airport while on his way to Kurdistan to see his brother. While he waits in the holding room, his narration is filled with vivid memories of his brother, life in Iraq, and a Catholic live-in girlfriend in New York that he didn't tell his parents about.
An interesting observation Amar makes is with the men playing military issue cards with Saddam Husein as the ace of spades, his sons clubs and hearts, and Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash the five of hearts. 13 of the cards had a black oval resembling a hooded head like the grim reaper. "And yet it was these cards, I thought, as the man nearest me laid down a flush - the cards without faces - that had the most humanizing effect. Maybe because their featurelessness more steadily suggested that you, too, could have been born Adil Abdallah Mahdi (deuce of diamonds) or Ugla Abid Saqr al-Kubaysi (deuce of clubs) or Ghazi Hammud al-Ubaydi (deuce of hearts) or Rashid Taan Kazim (deuce of spades). If only your parents had taken a later flight. If only your soul had sparked into being on a different continent, a different hemisphere, a different day."
There but for the grace of God go I.
Part III is author Ezra Blazer's animated radio interview where he reminisces about his time as a soldier in Germany, his secret family in Paris, and love.
I received Asymmetry in a GoodReads giveaway.
Kara
