Asunder

I loved Chloe Aridjis's Book of Clouds so it was exciting to read her new novel, Asunder, which, in a story about art, guardianship, damage and philosophy, revealed again the deftness and depth of narrative understanding of this subtle and courageous writer.

Ali Smith, New Statesman

Exhilarating… The novel wonderfully disobeys all conventional rules of realism and plotting, of show-don't-tell. Powerful and artful, Asunder works like a poem, pulling us into a labyrinthine sequence of connected images. By the end, it seems like an abstract painting, apparently defying narrative time. This all makes for rapturous and enraptured reading.

Michele Roberts, Independent

Strange, extravagant, darkly absorbing… This is a book about quietness and violence. There is a Nabokovian rhythm in Asunder's obsessive permutations, and in the novel's dance of fluttering life and slow decay. Her novel thrills with energy because of it.

Alexandra Harris, Guardian

Chloe Aridjis is crafting a poetics of the strange. To describe her novels as inconsequential is not to deny them substance, but to highlight their shadowy randomness, their pearlescent impressionism and the way in which they work by hints and cross-references... this is deft and shimmering fiction.

Kate McLoughlin, Times Literary Supplement

Aridjis has risen to the occasion with Asunder. Given that Asunder lacks a conventional plot, the fact that it is such an absorbing and moving book says much about Aridjis's skill as a writer. Her unusual imagery and lyrical style breathe life into this otherwise sombre story.

Financial Times

[A] stunningly good second novel... 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 (US), starred review

Aridjis's writing is refreshingly escapist... Moreover, the novel itself has escaped from the strait-jacket of convential narrative and plot. This leaves Asunder free to devote itself to mood and atmosphere, in which it is highly successful. Reading Asunder offers an unusually absorbing experience. It is also an unusually enjoyable one.

Peter Carty, Independent on Sunday

Asunder exists with an intensity stronger than that of most novels. Reading it is absorbing and enlarging to the imagination

Diana Athill

Set amidst the stillness of museums and the magic of indeterminate urban spaces, this is a subtly lyrical novel about the lasting seductions of art, the ubiquitous processes of decay -- and the surprising renewals that can come from these. 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

Marie, the narrator of this charming novel, has the ideal job for someone who likes a quiet life. She’s a guard at the National Gallery in London... but she’s starting to long for change. In a story this elegant, it had to be Paris where her shell will be cracked.

Sunday Times

Eschewing a conventional narrative, this absorbing novel deceptively contains a crackling energy within its understated, artful prose

Francesca Angelini, Sunday Times

A dark tale, nicely turned

William Leith, Evening Standard

Chloe Aridjis’s anticipated follow-up to her debut, Book of Clouds, haunts and beguiles as much as its predecessor

Daily Telegraph

Aridjis tells an improbable tale with enough details to give it authenticity, and to make her genuinely creepy story something thoughtful and original

Lesley McDowell, 4 stars, Independent on Sunday

This is an incredibly atmospheric novel, seen through the eyes of Marie, a consummate outsider

Bath Chronicle

Aridjis is a fantastic new voice in fiction with a real gift for character and location

Bath Magazine

Set against London’s rain-soaked streets, it is an astute portrait of the alienation of urban life

Anna Savva, 4 stars, Lady

A beautiful tale examining the processes of life

Good Book Guide

Eschewing a conventional narrative, this absorbing novel deceptively contains a crackling energy within its understated, artful prose

Francesca Angelini, Sunday Times