'A Separation'-An Enthralling, Single Sitting, Missing Person Mystery

 

A Separation by Katie Kitamura is full of subtle gestures and feints. Although it appears straightforward, Kitamura inserts gossamer layers and funhouse mirrors throughout the novel, which produce eerie echoes and need re-reading.
Simple enough: a spouse who has disappeared. The narrator of the novel decides to fly to Greece in order to find her missing husband, Christopher, after receiving a call from her mother-in-law. He is a writer who enjoyed success with his eccentric, meandering first book about the function of music in social gatherings, which allowed him to live "the relatively comfortable life that is made accessible to moderately successful authors," presenting his work in reputable journals and newspapers.
His second book, "a study of grieving customs throughout the world," was a challenging undertaking. The main character concludes that Christopher's visit to Greece was "very certainly...to observe its professional mourners, the women who were paid to utter lamenting at funerals."
There is already dissonance. Because they haven't been together recently, as the book's title suggests, the narrator is unsure of her husband's exact location. The narrator moves in with Yvan after Christopher has been gone for three months, but their separation is a strongly held-secret that they also share with Yvan. She continues to reside in a hotel in Greece while recurrent arsonist attacks smolder the nation. She passes past the room, which appears to have been abandoned by her husband hastily, for a brief moment. Apart from the narrator and a pair who act as though they are performing for an imaginary audience, the off-season hotel has a skeleton staff that she knows by name. The couple may be newlyweds.
One instance of Kitamura highlighting appearances and how they diverge from reality both within and outside of relationships is the pair and their libido. The great-aunt of a hotel driver, who is widely regarded as the greatest professional mourner because her caterwauling and wailing seem the most sorrowful, the sincerest, the narrator is drawn to the home of one of the professional mourners her husband sought out of curiosity. The narrator simply tells a falsehood when she first introduces herself by claiming to be the author of a book about funeral customs.
In addition, she previously noted her work as a translator, in which "you write and do not write the words...people are prone to argue that a great translation doesn't seem like a translation at all, as if the translator's ultimate purpose is to be invisible." The vacuum between the narrator and her now-divorced husband, which is always yawning, is very much in character with this drive to make decisions yet pretend not to. But acting like her husband is out of agency and choice is wildly out of character.
The Separation publicity materials advise readers to finish the compact book in one sitting. The request might sound strange given that Kitamura's narrative tends to smolder rather than overwhelm, much like the persistent flames that constantly loom over her Grecian horizon. The reading method, however, becomes clear about the halfway point and then propels in its Hitchcockian reorientation (no spoilers here). Along with this change, it is now clear that the topic of appearance vs. reality is more prevalent and demanding than previously believed.
Is the confrontation between Maria, whom Christopher had an affair with, and Stefano, the driver, whose great-aunt works in funeral homes, the key? Perhaps. As the pair debates in Greek, Kitamura deftly omits all language, leaving the narrator and us to make assumptions. This is especially true when Maria directs an angry glance at the narrator, "as if an actress you had been watching on television suddenly turned to acknowledge you, the spectator." The narrator quickly tells us that the fourth wall has been shattered, but why?
This sort of narrative gymnastics continues until the book's climax, where the parts may or may not come together. Before the book's last stillness, the narrator bemoans "the wounds you do not know you do not know about and the course of which you cannot foretell."
A Separation is a beautiful exploration of feasibilities and trajectories, of disguise and, ultimately, of story, and fabrication. It may be that it is also a deception, a slip into professional sorrow, or perhaps it is the invisibility of falling into something already determined.