Welcome to Litsy!

After Intimacies and now this one, I think I really like Kitamura's writing style. The narrator analyzes others' behavior so minutely, makes so many assumptions, and seems to second-guess herself so much that she feels like an unreliable narrator, even as she appears to be very journalistic in how she tells her story. Her comments about the work of a translator might have deeper meaning here. I almost want to read it again to dig in more.

This look at a husband‘s disappearance in Greece is quietly unsettling. Christopher and his wife are separated and haven‘t spoken in a month. When she receives a call from his mother, she follows him to the posh hotel he disappeared from. While this sounds like the start of a thriller, Kitamura uses it to examine fallibility and human nature. Perhaps the MC is so analytical as to not feel anything herself, but the book is interesting.

Disappointing. It‘s a VERY SLOW burn, especially for a book under 300 pages. I kept waiting for the moment when this book would reach its crescendo but sadly it just fizzled. A couple has uncoupled & while their family is unaware of the situation, the woman decides it‘s time to make the split official. When she learns her estranged husband is in #Greece she decides to fly there and ask for a divorce. However things don‘t go as planned. #FoodAndLit

Taking a page from my lil sis and reading this for #FoodAndLit #Greece 🥰I really liked Intimacies so I‘m hoping for similar vibes from this “older” book by Katie Kitamura.

Molly agreed to model with my next book as long as she got belly rubs after 😉💜🐶

Lovely sunny winter day here!

An interesting premise, a separated husband goes missing in Greece and his estranged wife goes to find him. Complicated. Well written.

#ReadingEurope2020 @Librarybelle @BarbaraBB #Greece

This book is listed as a mystery, and even though it involves a missing husband, it really is more of an existential look at relationships and marriage. It's told mostly through the inner thoughts and memories of a woman trying to make sense of her life and the end of her marriage. Overall, I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would.

Thursday things.

I finished “A Separation” last night, 10 minutes after I was supposed to sign-in to my online bookclub — which is to say, I speed-read. I didn‘t skim; I read every sentence. What I didn‘t do was leave myself a lot of time to process. I‘m *still* processing. This is a SNEAKY book! On the surface, it seems very direct. It‘s written in first person, reads super-fast, the plot is sensational (infidelity, murder), & there‘s a balmy, island setting.👇🏻

“In the end, what is a relationship but two people, and between two people there will always be room for surprises and misapprehensions, things that cannot be explained. Perhaps another way of putting it is that between two people, there will always be room for failures of imagination.”

I love the cover of this book. The story was a slow burn which didn‘t bother me at all, but at the end of it, I couldn‘t appreciate the read. The premise was good but it was executed poorly. @24in48 #24in48

I‘ve gotten a little time I‘m so far! Time to pick up food and head to bookclub. Picking it back up when I get back home 🤓#24in48 @24in48 #readathons 😬😬😬😬

Just started this one and my interest is sufficiently piqued.

Thank you so much Ruth @LoveToReadLiveToRead for my #jolabokaflod book! This has been on my tbr for ages, very excited!

An intriguing study of a relationship and it‘s various iterations, with a necessarily one sided point of view. Although there is not much action or change of scenery, and we spend a great deal of time inside the protagonist‘s thoughts, the book is a quick and interesting read. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I returned this to the library so fast, I didn‘t even take a picture of it. I was not into it. I had been really on the fence about reading this and then saw it and figured what the heck. I should listen to my instincts, it was not for me and I have yet to talk to anyone who was a fan. Interesting considering the buzz. 🤷‍♀️

Mix Hot Milk, Outline, An Unnecessary Woman and Grief is a Thing with Feathers together and you might just come up with this book. More a meditation than a story per se. A meditation on the nature of love, marriage, jealousy, expectations, life, limbo, and death. I‘m not sure I learned anything but I‘m pretty sure I didn‘t care about any of the characters. But at least it was a short ish book so it had that going for it.

‘What I am talking about are the natural failures of a relationship, even one that for a time has been very good. In the end what is a relationship but two people? And between two people there will always be room for surprises and misapprehensions, things that cannot be explained. Perhaps another way of putting it is that between two people there will always be room for failures of imagination.‘ Wow, I love this quote! Hits the nail on the head.

“Charm is not universal, desire is too often unreciprocated, it gathers and pools in the wrong places, slowly becoming toxic.”

FYI: The blurb is wrong it‘s not a mystery it focuses on the wife. It‘s mostly made up of the wife‘s musings on her marriage, her separation, and death. I highly recommend it if you‘re into that type of stuff.

This novel is art. Virginia Woolf for the now. Completely uninterested in fulfilling the reader‘s expectations or desires.

This started out really strong. It sort of fizzled on me. It was solidly ok.

Once you begin to pick at the seams, all deaths are unresolved (against the finality of death itself, there are the waves of uncertainty in its wake).

This is a beautifully written book. I found myself going from "what is the meat and potatoes of this story" to being entranced by poetic nature of Katie Kitamura's writing. A tragic story I'll be reading again.

#TBRtemptation post 3! A young woman and her faithless husband decide to separate. They keep it secret for the time being, and then he goes missing in Greece. She decides to go find him, and deals with deep reflections of how they got to where they are. #blameLitsy #blameMrBook 😎

I finished this over the course of my vacation week. In some ways it was a good vacation read in that I moved through it quickly despite reading only a little bit at a time. However, the main character seemed so detached from her situation and examination of her crumbling marriage that it left me a little cold.

Just received this one from one of my book subscriptions, #justtherightbook! Has anyone read this one yet? If so, please share your thoughts.

It wasn‘t bad enough to DNF, but for me, it definitely could have been better. I described it to my boss as feeling not quite finished, as if it was a partially-filled-in outline. As an examination of the complicated nature of grief, it‘s okay. As a novel? Unoriginal and beyond slow, without any satisfaction. #aseparation #katiekitamura

Honestly, I‘m pretty underwhelmed by this so far. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Hoping it gets better, or else it‘s definitely not going to live up to the promise of the jacket blurb. #aseparation #katiekitamura

45 more minutes to myself in Children‘s, so I‘m getting started on the next book in my pile! The jacket blurb sounds fabulous, so I‘m hoping it lives up! #aseparation #katiekitamura

And we're back!! I spent the #LitsyApocalypse browsing. So many cover temptations!

The library sale feels a lot like Christmas, except you get to choose your own presents! 📚📚📚 #librarysale #libraryhaul

I really enjoyed this book. I liked that it was a mystery throughout and that everything was necessary to the story- there wasn‘t a lot of fluff to side track the reader.

GIVEAWAY TIME! I am (forever) running out of space in my office, so one lucky Litten will benefit from it if they enter to win this big stack of books! To win, make a NEW post about a book you‘ve read more than once, use the hashtag #GIMMEGIMME, and tag me in the photo. Do this by 11:59pm EST on Sunday, February 11, and I'll randomly select one winner. (US only, sorry.) Good luck! 📚

Hmmm. This was … interesting. It wasn‘t so much a story as a study of the permutations of a marriage and its end. The prose is mostly imagined riffs of could haves and what ifs.

"Unfortunately, it is difficult to convince someone that they need something they cannot see the purpose of."

Great concept: A woman receives a call from her mother-in-law demanding she go to Greece to look for her missing son (the husband). Only they‘re separated and no one knows. The execution wasn‘t great and the story dragged. This could have been much more thought-provoking. And the audiobook narrator read in a complete monotone: it was terrible.

Beautifully written.

My Favorite Books of 2017

12. A Separation by Katie Kitamura. This book taught me how to touch absence—to feel in a very real way every pain we inflict on each other, to dance with ambivalence, to wonder (ponder) and to wonder (awe).

#KennyCobleBookAwards

3⭐️ A SEPARATION is the impending end of a five year marriage. Christopher curiously asks his wife to keep their separation a secret. Then he goes missing in Greece. The story unfolds slowly through the intricate thoughts, musings, reflections and imagination of Christopher‘s wife. Dialogue is very limited. I found myself wishing the story would move faster. https://lharvey250.tumblr.com/post/157314527809/the-separation-katie-kitamura-my...

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I kind of enjoyed this book about a man going missing in Greece and his wife looking for him while they were already on the brink of a divorce. She does not know how to act and react to his disappearance. I was irritated however by the style of the book, the attempt of philisophy in it: everything the woman says or does is followed by explanations of why she does what she does and says the things she says.

Loved this book. Elegant, haunting, character driven. While it has a huge plot twist, this is going to read like the meditative and literary Karl Ove Knausgaard's My Struggle series rather than "the next Gone Girl". I devoured this book, the writing was stunning.

Husband: "Are you okay? Why are you flailing?"
Me: "PLOT TWIST."

I thought this book was good. I was expecting it to be a thriller, but I was pleasantly surprised it wasn't.

#bookreview #bookworm #bookish

I couldn't think of a single book for #ThrillerThursday so I went to my TBR stack and found this. I'm sure I'll get around to it at some point.

#awesomeautumnbooks @Jess7

Not sure how I feel about this one 🤔 ...lovely writing, but not what I expected based on the description...a little underwhelming....

Normally I can't make it through books where the author doesn't use quotations marks--it's a deal breaker--but there was something about this story, the narrator's voice, that pulled me in and kept me reading til the last page.