I just could not believe in this book at all. The central relationship seemed so unlikely and it proved difficult to empathise with the protagonist and her psychological problems. The author failed to convince me that any aspect of the story could be true.

Presumably the language and grammar were aimed either to reflect that of someone with English as a second language or to mimic the paranoia and trauma of the central character but this made following the text difficult at times.

Disappointing.

I enjoyed the structure of this, and Sudjic's writing created a beautifully engrossing atmosphere. Short and bleak, this is not like the 'internet novel' Sympathy was, but I like the sparseness of it.

Probably one of the top books of the year. This totally gripped me from the opening paragraph, and the tension was kept up. The sense of displacement wherever the main character goes, whether that is back 'home' or in London was portrayed so well.

I loved how atmospheric this book was, and found Sudjic's description so compelling and vivid, though I struggled to follow the plot at times - perhaps I read this in the wrong frame of mind! I also did find the passage that grotesquely describes a fat woman on the plane to be bizarre and completely unnecessary, and a particularly tired moment as well - at least in e.g. the Patrick Melrose novels, such passages seem fitting given the character's cruel and judgemental tendencies, which it illustrated well, where as I did not find this in Asylum Road.

Asylum Road perfectly conveys that state of immigrant’s reticence —there are things that won’t let go but it is drowned in silence just to move on with your life. Overhearing conversations, micro aggressions, ghosts from the past, a mere phone call can throw you off balance just like that. Sudjic has done a wonderful job in depicting the strained relationship, slowly unraveling.

I enjoyed the concept of this book and was excited to read about Anja's journey, background and struggles to incorporate her culture with her London lifestyle. However, I felt like the plot was underdeveloped, and having finished it I would struggle to explicitly define any singular narrative, or any defining characteristics of the novel and its characters.

A three-act tragedy meets a masterly plotted thriller in this propulsive story about the search for normality, a couple’s uneasy journey to commitment, and how the ghosts of the past wreak havoc on both.

Haunted and haunting…brilliant brilliant book!

A couple drive from London to coastal Provence. Anya is preoccupied with what she feels is a relationship on the verge; unequal, precarious. Luke, reserved, stoic, gives away nothing. As the sun sets one evening, he proposes, and they return to London engaged.

Asylum Road is an exploration of trauma and survival. Anya lived through the seige of Sarajevo and is struggling to move on from her past. The prose here is precise and lingering, with moments of surprising humour. A little too distant for me but still impresive

I have to admit, as much as I was intrigued by the premise of Asylum Road, I did also partially request a galley of this because of Sudjic's surname sounding Eastern-European and us having that in common! I feel like I definitely don't see enough Balkans getting published, or at least not with any huge publicity, so I wanted to support by reading. It was interesting to read from Anya's perspective, especially in how unsure she was in every aspect of her life. This was particularly shown in relation to her relationship with Luke and how dependent she is on him. It did feel like being pulled along, bearing witness to her life without any assertiveness from her. However, her passivity didn't annoy me like I thought it might, because her thoughts and feelings were portrayed so realistically. I obviously enjoyed the portion set in Croatia, because it was nice to recognise names of places. I also really liked the ending and its ambiguity - it felt very fitting with Anya's characterisation and the novel as a whole.

Olivia Sudjic’s second novel is about the inescapability of our pasts, the longevity of trauma, and the limits of reinvention. ⁣
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Anya is a Bosniak who spent her childhood amidst the shelling of Sarajevo. Now in her early 30s in London Anya is directionless, ostensibly working on her PhD and overthinking her relationship with her emotionally distant and changeable English boyfriend, Luke. On their fifth anniversary she says that ‘on the first one I remembered feeling warm, insulated from the outside world. The second, I kept sensing what I thought was a phantom draught. The third I saw a detailed map of hairline cracks spreading out across the table between us.’ ⁣
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There are elements of her past that peak through, like her aversion to fresh fruit which reminds her of splattered flesh, her panic when Luke goes on a walk without notifying her. When Luke proposes and she overhears his parents speculate about her family, the couple journey to the Balkans to meet Anya’s family. ⁣
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The boundaries that separate past and present reveal themselves to be more permeable than those separating us from each other, and her childhood leaks increasingly into the present. Towards Luke she says that ‘without telling him things I was ashamed of, complex things, I couldn’t make him see that coming back was no homecoming for me. That I felt surer of my place there if I stayed away.’

Sharp writing and incisive analysis in a time of unoriginal plots and narrative that are predictable just by reading a book's synopsis. A very interesting writer who I will be checking out again.

I enjoy it when I'm wrong-footed as to what a novel is really about until I get into the heart of its story. “Asylum Road” is very cleverly structured in how it carefully reveals information in different sections as it carries you through the emotional journey of its protagonist Anya, a 20-something PhD student. The novel's opening line is “Sometimes it felt like the murders kept us together.” But rather than describing a couple who commit murders it goes on to detail their journey from London to France while listening to true crime dramas along the way. Anya is tense thinking her ecologically-minded boyfriend Luke might break up with her on this trip but it turns out he proposes to her with a diamond ring. It feels like this will become a typical modern-day story of the highs and lows of romance yet the ominous tone of that opening line remains and is carried through the story as we gradually learn that Anya was a survivor of the Seige of Sarajevo which occurred when she was a girl. But this isn't a historical account of the Bosnian War. Instead it shows the day to day experience of someone living with a deep trauma that other people are incapable of understanding.

The tone of unreconciled violence in this story is perfectly encapsulated in an early scene where Anya refers to her Balkan heritage when making casual dinner conversation with an elderly woman at someone else's wedding. It's described how “She'd blinked at me kindly and said it must be sad when your country no longer exists, then returned to pulverising her asparagus.” Similarly, there seems no way to create a bridge in understanding between Anya and Luke regarding Anya's past. In the second section of the book they travel back to her homeland to reconnect with her family including her mother who is suffering from Alzheimer's. The awkwardness of this journey and the emotional tug of war which occurs in a day to day relationship is vividly described: “His moods would shift abruptly, and at times I would find myself having crossed an obscure boundary into a strange place, a territory which only minutes ago had not been there.” Not only does Anya still carry with her the constant threat she experienced in childhood, but there's also the ever-present danger of being exiled from this relationship which seems like it will be cemented in marriage but remains precariously fragile.

It's admirable how Sudjic draws us so close to the reality of Anya's experience yet there's a building tension as the reader grapples to understand her motives. Often she seems trapped in a kind of inertia when she doesn't respond to someone speaking to her or make progress with larger elements of her life like working on her PhD. Instead the past constantly threatens to drown her like an undertow and we feel an ominous panic suddenly surge up to make her experience a debilitating vertigo. I greatly sympathised with Anya who wants to achieve a comforting stasis yet finds the world is in a constant state of flux – both in her personal life and the larger society. There are references to Brexit and recent terrorist attacks in London which have resulted in the creation of both mental and physical barriers between people. Despite being informed and connected through the news, the novel signals how there will always be a tragic gap between living through a traumatic experience and viewing it from the outside. The way in which “Asylum Road” artfully conveys this makes it a powerful and haunting story.

I wasn’t sure what to think of this but I ended up really loving it.

It’s a novel about travel and home and identity and family. It’s dreamlike and strange but incredibly compelling and it takes some turns I didn’t expect. A few reviews have compared it to Hot Milk but I actually preferred this to that.

It begins with Anya on the way to a trip with her boyfriend, Luke, who she is feeling distant from and their relationship feels tense.

It travels through France and Cornwall and Croatia and London and Scotland. It’s visceral and beautifully written and I found myself absolutely gripped. I read it in just over a day because I couldn’t put it down and felt fully immersed in its world.

4 stars

This is quite a difficult story to try and describe, and I find myself torn between loving the brutality of it and feeling misery at the bleakness. This is definitely not an uplifting story, and perhaps a grey day like today wasn’t the best time to read it!

Whilst a lot of the novel focuses on our narrator Anya’s relationship with Luke, the overwhelming feeling whilst reading this is of her confused sense of identity - having escaped Sarajevo as a young girl she has very little contact with her family there, but also seems to live her life with Luke under the oppression of her upbringing and feelings towards her family. It seems only inevitable that this will eventually tear them apart...

With a strong focus on both physical and self-imposed borders, on the history of Sarajevo, on loss, tragedy and trying to find your place in the world, this is a hard hitting and fairly heavy novel, although the writing itself is very accessible and easy to read.

Raw, unsettling and very dark, with an ending I had to read twice to be certain of, this is one for literary fiction fans who enjoy stories where as much is left unsaid as said, and you must make the connections for yourselves. Make sure you’re in the right frame of mind for it, as could be quite an emotionally draining read with so little hope offered.

However you feel about it, it can’t be denied that Sudjic is an incredible writer bound to leave you reeling.

I was interested to read this book having seen it mentioned as a book to look out for in 2021, but didn't know a great deal about it and therefore went in relatively blind. It is a short novel about a young woman, Anya, who left Sarajevo as a child and is now living in London with her fiance. Based around a series of journeys it explores anxiety, the impact of trauma and the search for security.

The book does jump around both in time and place and at times that make it challenging to keep up with and for me meant I didn't always feel as engaged as I might have. Told primarily in the first person, there was also a sudden shift to third person which I found a little strange. Sudjic's taut prose is impressive and certainly builds tension, leaving the reader on edge and mirroring Anya's sense of uncertainty. Ultimately I was left with the feeling that it was an impressive book, but one that I admired rather than truly enjoyed.

Thank you to Netgalley and Bloomsbury for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

As always the author slowly traps you into the most unsettling story, the small details making an almost jigsaw like picture of the story. Intense and cunning as always.

Asylum Road

A stark, spare (perhaps a little too spare for my taste) tense novel with some excellent writing & interesting and modern themes. I didn’t warm to or care for any of the characters unfortunately. However I honestly believe some books shouldn’t be read on kindle and this is (perhaps) one of them.

Thanks to Netgalley and to Bloomsbury for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book.

I absolutely loved Olivia Sudjic’s short nonfiction work Exposure, which focused on the relationship between women, anxiety and creativity. I also liked her novel Sympathy, although I did feel that it was a tad overly long and may have benefitted from some tighter editing (I have a general preference for shorter novels, so this is a personal critique rather than a general one).

I very much enjoyed Asylum Road, which had that tight, incisive feeling that I felt Sympathy lacked. I related to the narrator from the opening chapter. Sudjic‘s writing style has never disappointed me and this is no exception. She is one of those writers whose announcement of a new work will always excite me, and I hope Asylum Road finds the readership it deserves.

To be honest, if Olivia Sudjic decided to publish a collection of her grocery lists, I would probably buy it, read it and rave about it.
'Asylum Road' is a weird little novel about Anja/Anya, who lives in London and has barely gone back to Split, her hometown in Bosnia, since leaving when she was a child. She has left behind her parents and travels back with her fiance after overhearing his parents commenting on the fact it was strange he had never met them. There is a lot in there about belonging - not being quite from here, but no longer having a tangible connection there either -, being in between,
It is easy to feel Anya's pain and feeling of not fitting in; you feel her discomfort with her., and the trauma of the war. There are gaps between Anya and everyone around her - her boyfriend who does not see her slow mental breakdown, the well-meaning friend who somehow cannot reach her, Mira who wants to move to London and is full of determination and optimism; her sister and her resentment.
Olivia Sudjic inserted different themes woven into the story - Brexit, Donald Trump, climate change - which is something I see more and more in recent novels but still somehow takes me by surprise, like a brutal return to reality; but she does it very subtly.
I was not convinced entirely by the various changes of times, the flashbacks that did not insert themselves neatly into a timeline. I understand why it was done this way but it felt... too scattered at times.
It is still a beautiful, dark little gem, and I enjoyed reading it - despite how anxious it made me feel!

Asylum Road is a short, fragmentary literary novel about Anya, who fled to the UK from the Balkan War as a child, and her distant fiancé Luke.

Throughout the novel, Anya deals with her anxiety and sense of dislocation as well as her relationship with a rather cold and irritable man. Anya and Luke take several trips together, visiting his Brexit-voting Cornish parents and her family in Sarajevo. Anya loses her important notebook for her art history PhD and her phone on an aeroplane and is tormented by the loss they represent.

The novel explores themes of anxiety, belonging to a family and a nation, and journeying together and alone. I related to Anya, with her nervous habit of checking for chin hairs and her worrying. I disliked Luke and just wanted him to show some empathy for Anya.

Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for providing a review copy in exchange for honest feedback.