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Marie's job as a guard at the National Gallery in London offers her the life she always wanted, one of invisibility and quiet contemplation. But amid the hushed corridors of the Gallery surge currents of history and violence, paintings whose power belies their own fragility. There also lingers the legacy of her great-grandfather Ted, the museum guard who slipped and fell moments before reaching the suffragette Mary Richardson as she took a blade to one of the gallery's masterpieces on the eve of the First World War. After nine years there, Marie begins to feel the tug of restlessness. A decisive change comes in the form of a winter trip to Paris, where, with the arrival of an uninvited guest and an unexpected encounter, her carefully contained world is torn open. Asunder is a rich, resonant novel of beguiling depths and beautiful strangeness, exploring the delicate balance between creation and destruction, control and surrender.
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Reviews
"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)
"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)
"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)