A Separation in Around the World in 80 Books

Jun 11, 2017 Beverly rated it it was ok

Shelves: contemporary, womens-fiction, europe, 2017, newtome2017

This was a 2.5 read for me.
thoughts coming shortly

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Feb 12, 2017 Nadine in NY Jones rated it really liked it

Shelves: r2017-in-2017, wouldnt-normally-read, literary-schmiterary, fiction, psych-psych-psych, stayed-up-way-too-late

This book was incredibly compelling. I was surprised at how riveted I was to the pages - I read and read and read and then it was done. At 4 am. (There were extenuating circumstances that led to me being awake in the middle of the night. But still.)

There is tension but no immediacy. There is a distance to this, a certain passivity. The lack of quotation marks (an apparent trend nowadays) adds a strange dreaminess and another layer of passivity and distance. This is not happening now, it is being ...more

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Feb 22, 2022 Johanne rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2022-books

This was an interesting exploration of marriage and infidelity and death and grief. The narrator, an unnamed woman in those blurry years between youth and middle age, has been separated from her philandering husband for about 6 months when he disappears in Greece. At his request, they hadn’t yet told anyone they were separated and her mother-in-law insists that she go to Greece in search of her husband. Maintaining the fiction that they are still a married couple, she agrees to go, getting dragg ...more

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Jun 30, 2025 Lindsey Z rated it really liked it

Shelves: own-in-print

Kitamura has such a cultivated and polished literary style. I just got swept up in the narrator's many wonderings and anxieties about marriage and death. I felt so deeply inside of her head, with an intimacy that is characteristic of Kitamura's novels. Heavily philosophical about relationships and intentions, about pretenses and desires. ...more

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