"Aridjis' captivating, cerebral novel is set in a modern-day London that, when envisioned via her sophisticated prose, calls to mind more contemplative times of a century ago. [Her] layered, painterly prose evokes this world to perfection." -- Booklist (starred review) "Dark and peculiar, simultaneously sinister and playful, Aridjis' modern gothic vision will charm those prepared to linger in her cabinet of curiosities. [An] oddly compelling tale." -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "While there's a distinctly feminist scent wafting through the pages of this short, beautiful novel , it never feels remotely polemical--in fact, it's all the more powerful for being so irreducible to a single theme. Aridjis's intelligent prose makes this slight story into something dramatic and affecting, completely coherent and oddly irresistible. It is a brilliant book. " -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Lyrical and haunting.
A beautiful portrait of urban loneliness, and the pursuit of meaning amid the barbed comforts of solitude." -- Economist "[Asunder] is full of shadows and symbolism one can't quite put a finger on. A study in grayness and halftones, never using the extremes of black and white or bold color. [yet] her observations often have a startling zing." -- New York Journal of Books "Chloe Aridjis is crafting a poetics of the strange. This is deft and shimmering fiction." -- Times Literary Supplement (UK) "Chloe Aridjis's debut novel, Book of Clouds --winner of the French Prix du Premier Roman Etranger in 2009--was a critical success and a daunting act to follow. [With its] unusual imagery and lyrical style .
Aridjis has risen to the occasion with Asunder . An absorbing and moving book ." -- Financial Times (UK) " Strange, extravagant, darkly absorbing . An original and assertive performance with more than a hint of the baroque . Having surprised us in Berlin (in Book of Clouds ), Aridjis surprises us again with her comical and macabre version of London , where goths huddle in nightclub corners 'like packed umbrella stands' and a hypnotist might cure your headache while bequeathing you a limp. There is a Nabokovian rhythm in Asunder's obsessive permutations , and in the novel's dance of fluttering life and slow decay. Obsessed by museums and collections, the novel is itself a museum of motifs displayed in tense juxtaposition. It is the work of an addicted image-maker who fills her cabinet of curiosities and then adds some more .
[Chloe Aridjis's] novel thrills with energy ." --Alexandra Harris, Guardian (UK) "In this little gem of a novel, Aridjis takes on the troubling questions of life and quietly works her way to the best answers she can find. Aridjis is something of a genius in her ability to enrich the ordinary with epiphanies rendered in deceptively short and simple prose." --Bruce Jacobs, Shelf Awareness "Brilliantly exact and disconcerting, Asunder exists with an intensity stronger than that of most novels. Reading it is absorbing and enlarging to the imagination." --Diana Athill, author of Stet and Somewhere Towards the End "Chloe Aridjis writes about sensations at the edges of perception, capturing experiences rarely included in fiction. A surprising sensibility and an effortlessly original voice." --Eva Hoffman, author of Lost in Translation.