Synopses & Reviews
This is her story. About the end of her marriage. About what happened when Christopher went missing and she went to find him. These are her secrets, this is what happens.
A young woman has agreed with her faithless husband: it’s time for them to separate. For the moment it’s a private matter, a secret between the two of them. As she begins her new life, she gets word that Christopher has gone missing in a remote region in the rugged south of Greece; she reluctantly agrees to go look for him, still keeping their split to herself. In her heart, she’s not even sure if she wants to find him. As her search comes to a shocking breaking point, she discovers she understands less than she thought she did about her relationship and the man she used to love.
A searing, suspenseful story of intimacy and infidelity, A Separation lays bare what divides us from the inner lives of others. With exquisitely cool precision, Katie Kitamura propels us into the experience of a woman on edge, with a fiercely mesmerizing story to tell.
Review
"Kitamura’s prose gallops, combining Elena Ferrante-style intricacies with the tensions of a top-notch whodunit." — Elle
Review
"Profound and gripping. I had that rare sense of feeling like I was in a creation specifically made out of words, that couldn’t have been made out of any other substance. Kitamura combines the calm complexity of Joseph Conrad with the pacing and reveal of Patricia Highsmith. This novel is a wonder and a pleasure." Rivka Galchen, author of Atmospheric Disturbances and Little Labors
Review
"A Separation displays Kitamura’s stylistic control once again…. Violence of all kinds, not just against other bodies but against other minds, remains Kitamura’s quarry. A Separation proves that few stalk such game more patiently or more powerfully." San Francisco Chronicle
Review
"Kitamura weaves a novel of quiet power, mostly due to a narrative voice that is so subtly commanding — so effortlessly self-aware and perceptive, teeming with dry yet empathetic humor — that it’s a challenge not to follow her journey in a single sitting." Harper’s Bazaar
Review
"A slow burn of a novel that gathers its great force and intensity through careful observation and a refusal to accept old, shopworn narratives of love and loss." Jenny Offill, author of Dept. of Speculation
Review
"Unsettling… Kitamura traces the narrator’s thoughts in sentences striking for their control and lucidity, their calm surface belied by the instability lurking beneath… The more the narrator tells us, the less we trust her. And the less we trust her, the more this hypnotic novel compels us to confront the limits of what we, too, can know." O, the Oprah Magazine
Review
"Kitamura is a writer with a visionary, visual imagination… In A Separation, [she] has made consciousness her territory. The book is all mind, and an observant, taut, astringent mind it is." The New Yorker
About the Author
Katie Kitamura is a critic and novelist living in New York City. She is the author of Gone to the Forest and The Longshot, both of which were finalists for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award. A recipient of a Lannan Residency Fellowship, Kitamura has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, Granta, BOMB, Triple Canopy, and is a regular contributor to Frieze.