This was an intriguing debut, but not a book to my liking. One review called it the 'literary Gone Girl.' Just to reiterate here, I enjoyed Gone Girl. I thought it was clever, suspenseful, and masterfully elicited strong emotions from all who read it. Nearly THREE YEARS have passed since it's release. Can we please stop with the Gone Girl comparisons as marketing ploy? I don't think I'm alone here in being tired of this, and I feel as if it's actually detracting from the greatness of Flynn's work. In every instance, I find that the book being compared does not live up to Gone Girl. How does that reflect on the original work? The things that made Gillian Flynn's book great (excruciating suspense, clever plotting, multiple narrators) were not present in A Separation. Okay, rant over.

Now, that is not to say great things were lacking in this novel - there were some searing observations about human nature, and Kitamura masterfully set an evocative scene of a sleepy seaside town in Greece. I did a fair bit of highlighting:

"The effect was not a new candidness or verisimilitude to the photographs that proliferated-on our phones, computers, on the Internet-but rather the opposite: the artifice of photography had infiltrated our daily lives. We pose all the time, even when we are not being photographed at all."
"One of the problems of happiness-and I'd been very happy, when Christopher and I were first engaged-is that it makes you both smug and unimaginative."

It was certainly smart, but it felt detached. Much of the prose was languid and lacking urgency or emotion, in what seemed like a rather urgent and emotional situation! I prefer a plot driven narrative and some emotional pull, so I should have steered clear when it was lauded as written with "exquisitely cool precision." As I said, there were some astute observations that really made me think, but nothing that I would describe as beautiful prose. If this is to be compared to any recent novel, I'd say it most resembles Fates and Furies: a cerebral, sociological study of a marriage that was also critically acclaimed. I can SEE the admirable qualities in this book, but they are not for me. However, if you enjoyed Fates and Furies, you might really enjoy the tone and character analysis in A Separation.

Many thanks to Riverhead for an advance copy for my honest review!
(For more reviews and bookish musings: http://www.bornandreadinchicago.com/)