"The past keeps intruding. We are sick to death of it. I find I am now welcome in my own home. My own country. Again and again this happens. I seem to be the common denominator. This realisation is, at first, the end of a cigarette in the dark, then a train sucking me toward it as passes through my station."

This is Sudjic’s second novel – one she started work on in 2015, drawing on her own inheritance. She has also written a non-fiction long essay which explores among others the work (and their experiences of the reaction to their work) of Rachal Cusk, Elena Ferrante and Jenny Offil and there are overlaps with the work of all three authors.

Anya the (mainly) first person narrator is living in London in her early 30s in the flat of her boyfriend Luke – son of a comfortable Cornish based family. She met Luke in 2012 at a wedding. Anya is studying for an art history PhD (alongside transcription, essay farming and private tutoring), Luke works in the City.

Anya grew up in Sarajevo but when young was evacuated with her older sister to an Aunt in Glasgow – her parents refusing to leave Bosnia, a gap grew up between them which became harder to bridge, particularly after the suicide of her brother (a middle child).

The book is based around a series of road trips.

First Luke and Anya driving down France – Anya believing they may split up, but with Luke proposing to her. Marriage for Anya is both something of wary fascination.

"Luke and I owed out first meeting to the wedding of our only mutual friends and since then I’d paid attention to ring fingers, to the self-confidence of these women, like expensive cats that had all been microchipped. My ringless finger marked we as a stray among them."

Then a train journey to Luke’s possessive and Brexit-voting parents in the Cornish port of Mousehole (which also features as the title of the first section). Luke’s Mum “was the kind of mother who refused to knock. A fan of borders but not boundaries.”

Overhearing Luke’s parents bafflement (presumably originating from Luke) at Anya’s refusal to discuss her parents or family – Anya reluctantly agrees to a trip to see her own parents. The arrival at Split airport gives the second section its title and is perhaps a little too obvious a metaphor for the disintegration of Anya and Luke’s relationship that follows an extremely awkward and tense meeting with Anya’s family (after travel via Croatia and Montenegro) – her practical joker father, her mother suffering from Alzheimer’s and convinced they are still under active siege, her resentful sister. It’s a journey which confronts Anya with her past and Luke with the reality of her background and behaviour

It struck me then why it is that the English phrase – to drive home – means to make someone understand.

The last section has Anya – uncertain of whether she has succesfully terminated a pregnancy, apart from Luke, living in a “commune” on the real life London Asylum Road (the title of the third section) – in which dealing with her asylum in the modern sense she also seeks asylum in the more historical sense (which gave the road its name) – care for mental anguish. She lives there with her late brother’s ex-girlfriend – now an editor of Balkan non-fiction (which allows additional exploration of the book’s meta-themes as well as adding a Cusk-ian link and a Ferrante-esque interaction). In this section the writing of the novel breaks down deliberately: vivid memories of the past that she is trying to process (a bizarre trip with her cousin in Scotland to hunt deer) appear in the present tense; and a trip back to a college reunion in Cambridge – one she seems to take more on the advice of others and which leads to a sexual encounter with her college boyfriend – is rendered in the second person reflecting some form of distancing and self observation.

Certain images recur: a dread of tunnels; a phobia of soft fruit; a reluctance to learn drive; a maddening ability to lose important items; a fear of desertion and of unexplained absence; invading and out of place animals sharing human spaces (moles, jellyfish, wild boar, mice); thawing and decay; crusts and vomit; the habitual removal of chin hair; sleeplessness and turned bodies; repeating dreams – all of which seem to have their base in past experiences and hidden traumas.

One small point of correction (unless it is a deliberate mistake). At one stage Luke and Anya discuss the latin phrase “Noli me tangere” (a phrase which recurs in the novel as a brushing off and an instruction to stop clinging on to the past) as spoken by Jesus to Mary when she tries to hold on to him after his death. However they get the wrong Mary – it was Magdalene not Mary Mother of Jesus (so that any links to Anya or Luke’s maternal relations are misleading).

But the really recurring imagery of the book is journeys – particularly road trips. This is a book about the repeating cycles of the past and about a desire to escape them and find some kind of escape route either into some form of happy ever after ending (such as marriage) or via a more foreceful tangential escape route (which gives the book its striking ending and final road trip). It is perhaps no surprise to see that the author’s second non-fiction is to be about Desire Lines – and how women navigate the world by unplanned paths.

Finally although a book about the Balkan experiences it acts as a commentary on Brexit also: sometimes perhaps too crudely (a passenger that sits opposite Anya on the train ride to Cornwall is like a collection of stereotypes), sometimes funnily (the quote about Luke’s mother) but sometimes at a meta level. In particular with this quote in which publishers are exasperated at a refusal to move on from the war in literature (which of course could never happen in England).

"It’s only ….. a shame, that’s all. To be still stuck talking about this [the Balkan war]. Even some of the publishing people I know say we should move on, stop making art about it, they say we’re in paralysis, which is true, politically, economically, everything …… But it seems impossible not to talk about [the war] when these people, these revisionists, still exist"

Overall a book with surprising depth – not all of which I think I have uncovered – for example what are the origins of her relationship with Christopher (her best friend, advisor, confidant and refuge).

My thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing Plc for an ARC via NetGalley

I went into this quite blind as I haven’t read anything by the author but was intrigued from the synopsis. I really enjoy a book that builds tension to a gripping finale. 😱 Not sure if it was my mood maybe but I couldn’t connect with this story.....It was fragmented and unpredictable which I don’t mind, but in this case it left me quite confused.🙃 The way the author builds the tension though is brilliant! Her writing really is atmospheric as I could feel the anxiety pulsing through the pages. I think again - as this has happened to me a lot lately - I struggled to connect with the characters.😬 Maybe its me. Maybe I’m the problem. It’s not you, it’s me!!😂
This book explores identity, men and women, politics and class with a probing eye. There were a lot of layers within this book which I could see but they struggled to gel together and it jumped all over the place. That’s probably the only way I can describe it as I’m confusing myself now.😅

Anyhoo, interesting themes explored and powerful writing in parts, but just missed the mark for me. I know many of you will enjoy this book especially those who enjoyed WEATHER by Jenny Offill. Since finishing the book, I’ve seen others have recommended it for fans of Rachel Cusk so there you go.

A quietly powerful novel about a character's anxiety and feelings of displacement. Sudjic's writing is crisp and clean, cleverly weaving an undercurrent of unease throughout.

I *really* wanted to like this book, but unfortunately it missed the mark on a few key occasions. Sudjik's analysis of the human cost of both Brexit and the Balkan Wars was deft and subtle, and I wish she had stuck with this.
Instead, this slim novel seemed to contain about five or six different novels that didn't gel together, meaning that characters and instances came out of nowhere a lot of the time. While her presentation of sickness and physicality was great, her presentation of inter-personal relationships and interior emotions was lacking, leading to decisions and events that also seemed to come out of nowhere. The writing was often exquisite but the structure and characterisations let the novel down, on the whole.

I wasn't sure I'd want to read this, but the cool, polished prose of the opening sucked me in. I should have stuck with my instincts, though, as absolutely nothing about the plot interested me. While the sentences are crystal-clear, they are also somewhat cold, and I was left entirely unmoved. (The rating given here is a compromise; it would be lower based on my personal enjoyment of the book, but higher based on the quality of the writing.)

Olivia Sudjic’s novel follows Anya who finds herself engaged to Luke during their Provencal holiday rather than alone after break-up she’d anticipated. Theirs is a tricky relationship - Anya constantly navigating Luke’s moods and taciturnity, financially dependent and aware that Luke is in control. When he produces a ring, she feels relief but no joy, deciding she must introduce him to the family she’s barely visited since she left Sarajevo as a child. Once in the Balkans, the balance of power tilts subtly and shortly after their return, Luke suggests they take a break, the first in a series of crises that will see Anya’s grip on reality loosening.

Sudjic’s novel is extraordinarily powerful. Anya’s voice is careful, her constant efforts to interpret Luke’s silences and unexplained absences indicative of this strained, unhealthy relationship in which one craves the security she hopes will anaesthetise her trauma while the other seems incapable of connection. It’s an impressive piece of fiction, executed with an elegant economy.

I absolutely loved Sudjic's debut, Sympathy, and I requested this book based on that. The books are so starkly different, I don't think you would know it's the same author!!

Asylum Road is a really excellent novel, with all the hallmarks of a 21st century tale: a detached protagonist, a non-linear timeline, very few punctuation marks... it's very on trend, and it does all of these things in the best possible way. The constant movement of the characters and the journeys they take are fascinating, and the politics of this novel are dealt with in a intelligent and sensitive way. I would definitely recommend this novel to anyone who enjoys literary fiction!

This novel felt rather scattered and fragmented. It jumps from one place to another and from the past to the present and back again. I found it challenging to keep up with it all and it occasionally felt forced and not quite finished yet. Interesting themes though, but I'm afraid the book didn't win me over.
2,5/3 stars

Thank you Bloomsbury and Netgalley for the ARC.

This title will appear in my round-up of notable new novels of the winter on Five Books.

I seriously enjoyed ASYLUM ROAD – it was just up my street, with a cold, not-totally-loveable protagonist, and complicated relationships (both familial and romantic). The bit that really stood out to me was the mother with early onset dementia, which made her relive the time during the siege for the rest of her life – what a powerful metaphor for all those present, who have been impacted by it their whole lives.

I read Sudjic's SYMPATHY so I knew a little of what to expect, but I plan to read everything she ever writes.

Cool & clever. 10/10

The lack of quotation marks combined with the fragmented writing style make for a frustrating reading experience. Not only is author's language intentionally opaque but the non-linear narrative is extremely confusing. This novel strikes me as affected and boring but I am pretty sure that it will appeal to fans of authors such as Deborah Levy, Rachel Cusk, and possibly even Jenny Offill.

A short, fragmentary novel set over several journeys in time and place that examines anxiety, lasting effects of trauma and the experience of exile. Its protagonist, Anya is 31, on holiday in France with boyfriend Luke. As she contemplates their relationship, he proposes and the couple go on to visit first his parents in Cornwall then hers in Sarajevo. Anya and her older sister left Sarajevo and their family as children during the civil war to live with their aunt in Scotland. She has since built a new life for herself in London but is rudderless and full of anxiety. Her hopes for security and sense of belonging rest with Luke yet over the course of the visits to Cornwall and Sarajevo, long repressed trauma resurfaces and their relationship and Anya herself slowly unravel.

At times, Asylum Road is an unsettling read. Coming from similar parts of the world as Sudjic’s protagonist, I was particularly impressed with her sensitive portrayal of Anya’s experiences: her search for security, survivor’s guilt, life back ‘home’. This is a powerful novel, perhaps uneven at times but very accomplished, nevertheless.

My thanks to Bloomsbury and Netgalley for the opportunity to read Asylum Road.

This is a book which has been a completely different plot to that I had initially expected. I have literally been unable to put this one down. 
This is a plot filled with the exploration of anxiety and the aftermath of trauma. Anya is a likeable character from early on in this one. 
This is definitely a little unsettling, however I have been completely addicted and unable to put this book down. 
The main protagonist in this one has very much tried to put away her past, rather than attempt to deal with it in any way. 
This has been breathtaking and I'm so thrilled to have had the absolute pleasure of reviewing this one. I absolutely recommend this book, it is without a doubt a five star read.

There was a lot of depth to this and a refusal to over-explain that I found really refreshing. Ultimately, I loved this until I didn't.

There were some stunning sentences and passages that described with an uncanny precision strange feelings and fleeting thoughts.

I just didn't feel that it's ending was as strong as the rest of the novel.

My thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

I loved the writing style in this book, found it very relatable in terms of how I felt at times. I really want to read her other book now.

I had never heard of Olivia Sudjic, and had requested this proof based purely on the authors blurbing her (Daisy Johnson, for example) and the comparisons to Deborah Levy’s Hot Milk, which I love. So I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect, but I really enjoyed this little book. It’s about a woman in her early thirties who isn’t sure about her relationship, her work, or her family, and you can’t help but feel sympathy for the slightly helpless protagonist as her life slowly crumbles. It’s partly set in Croatia and Bosnia & Herzegovina, where the main character was born, which I enjoyed because I’ve visited both countries and found the contrast between amazing scenery and the hideous scars of war fascinating and Sudjic draws on this. It’s an experimental novel in that the chronology is loose, and the narration has an element of stream-of-consciousness, all things I enjoy, but I was still a little thrown by the slip from first person into third in the final section as I wasn’t expecting it. Sudjic is definitely a writer to watch out for.

The reaction to Olivia Sudjic's first novel Sympathy led her to write a non-fiction essay on the anxiety epidemic, autofiction and internet feminism, Exposure, drawing on the work and experience of Elena Ferrante, Maggie Nelson, Jenny Offill and Rachel Cusk, amongst others. In an interview at the time Sudjic commented:

"When (white, cis-gendered) men write, even about their personal experience, they write about the human condition and, like the erroneous beige of flesh-coloured tights, their perspective is deemed universal. Books written by women, about women, are not. That’s Women’s Fiction."

Asylum Road is her second novel and our first person narrator, Anya, in her early 30s, opens her story, strikingly:

"Sometimes it felt like the murders kept us together. I’d suggested taking a break, which turned into the holiday, to remedy our real problems–but I knew we’d need one more for the road. They distracted me from my thoughts, from his silences. Murders and holidays were a quick fix that worked."

The murders are actually a share-loved of true-crime podcasts, but this speaks to the underlying trauma in Anya's ostensible account of a modern relationship, other manifestations including her phobia of tunnels and strongly adverse reaction to any form of soft, squishy, fruit. Anya we learn moved to the UK, to school and to live with her aunt, during the wars that followed the break-up of Yugoslavia, although her parents chose to remain in beseiged Sarajevo where they still live.

The story starts with a road trip to France with her boyfriend, their relationship at that cusp between breaking-up or moving towards the next level. Anya observes sardonically:

"Luke and I owed our first meeting to the wedding of our only mutual friends and since then I’d paid attention to ring-fingers, to the self-confidence of these women, like expensive cats that had all been microchipped. My ringless finger marked me as a stray among them. Something pitiable and out of place, which made me want it more, not just for protection but as validation. By that summer, listening to tales of yet another engagement could produce strange reactions in me. I’d ask the newly affianced if she’d been uneasy following her suspicious-acting partner out onto some remote cliff face like that. A rock to the head instead of the hand!

Only I would laugh at this."

But when Luke does indeed produce a hand-destined rock for her, their next journeys are to Cornwall, to visit his Cornwall-nationalist and pro-Brexit parents, and then, reluctantly on her behalf and somewhat forced by overhearing Luke's parents shock that she seldom sees them, back home to Bosnia, via another roadtrip through Croatia and Montenegro, where she finds her mother suffering from trauma-induced dementia, still convinced the city is under bombardment.

They then return to London, and she undertakes two more trips. One is for a University reunion at Cambridge, and below is as she pulls into the station with its rather odd train sign (Anya went to the university for which the city is rather more famed):

"After endless fields, she recognised the cycle track now running alongside the train, the science park, sixth form college, rugby pitches and tenpin bowling, the large industrial sheds. It felt like coming up on a strong pill, the connection to these nondescript places–places she hadn’t noticed when she lived there. The train window slowed alongside the station sign. CAMBRIDGE HOME OF ANGLIA RUSKIN UNIVERSITY"

The Cambridge section, once she arrives, switches to the third person, and a flashback to her trip back to her aunt's home in Scotland when she goes down at the end of her first Michelmas Term is written in the present tense, both for reasons not entirely clear to me.

And then finally she moves with a friend from back home, who has following Anya's visit decided to come to the UK, to a bedsit in the eponymous Asylum Road in Peckham, named after the Licensed Victuallers' Benevolent Institution Asylum which stood in the area (actually a almshous for retired pub landlords).

The author's own comments on the novel (a year pre-publication) from an interview (https://www.pifmagazine.com/2019/03/interview-with-olivia-sudjic/)

"Q: Where is your second novel set?

A: Lots of places. The title, which is Asylum Road, is a real place, which is in Peckham. The idea of the road extends to the fact that there is a series of places in which it’s set. It starts in France, or rather, driving from London to France, then Cornwall, then Croatia, then Montenegro, then Bosnia and back to London, which is where it ends. And all those places are, in some way, connected to me. It’s convenient that they’re close to me, but it’s more to do with the plot that they’re set there. It’s very much a European novel, as opposed to American, which is what the first novel was.

Q: You wrote about New York in Sympathy, and you wrote a bit about Brussels in Exposure. Having grown up in London, I wonder if your writing is tied to cities.

A: I feel it is quite tied to cities. But that may also be because I feel like I, at the moment, anyway, am writing about—this is an annoying phrase—“modern life.” Even though Asylum Road does, in large part, take place in places that feel like they’re far away from civilization, those places are always in relation to a city. The main character feels like she’s getting further and further away from urban civilization, and closer to a kind of anti-civilization, which the book doesn’t characterize as negative, but which she sees as negative."

This is an impressive work and one rather deeper that it may seem on the surface, particularly the underlying hints of trauma mentioned above. It perhaps came for me at the wrong time and in the wrong format though, as I read this immediately after The Shadow King, which dials up portentousness and echoes to 11, and on a Kindle, which for me is always suited to a lighter read, so I think some of the subtlety and depth passed me by.

3.5 stars although a book I would recommend to others.

Asylum Road by Olivia Sudjic is a well written novel about a woman whose relationship and life begins to fall apart.

Asylum Road is a fragmented novel following a young woman during a transitory period in her life. Anya, a 31-year-old, escaped from Sarajevo as a child and moved to Glasgow where she was raised by relatives. She now lives in London with boyfriend, Luke, whose family are proud Cornish people and pro-Brexit.

The narrative jumps about with little warning between different locations - London, Cornwall, Glasgow, Split, Cambridge (where Anya studied at university), but the feeling of Anya's unsettledness and disconnect from her surroundings pervades, and the breakdown of her life as she knows it. The main focus of this is her crumbling relationship with the stoic Luke, who is prone to disappearing on her with little notice and being generally distant. The two travel to Anya's hometown to see her parents and sister on a road trip of sorts, and I found these sections to be some of the most memorable of the book.

I liked how Sudjic is sparing with her words but uses them to great effect; Anya's sense of uncertainty and discomfort in particular was well portrayed. The constantly shifting time periods left me feeling a bit untethered at times, scrambling to work out if x even happened before y or vice versa, and I felt quite distant and disconnected at times from what was happening as a result of this.

Despite my misgivings I'd recommend this, and look forward to checking out more of Sudjic's writing.

Asylum Road is a novel about things breaking down, and a protagonist who has packed away her past. On a French holiday, Anya's boyfriend proposes, but she has misgivings about their relationship. They visit his parents in Cornwall, where her childhood comes up again: her move from Sarajevo to Glasgow, and her parents who stayed behind. Finally, Anya agrees they should visit her family to tell them the news, but going back exposes more cracks, and the summer reaches boiling point

At its heart, this is a novel about a woman's relationships—with her boyfriend, her family, and her past—and how these all come to a head one summer. The book is written in the first person (except one notable exception, a third person section that made me think for a moment that it was a mistake) in distinctive prose, which worked well to get across Anya's uncertain mental state, with moments of flashback woven into the larger narrative. The writing gets across awkwardness very well, in particular a dinner with Anya's family in which she has to translate for her boyfriend, and you get drawn into the choices of action and inaction that Anya takes. However, I didn't always feel engaged with the book, with elements that didn't seem explained or developed, which made me feel quite ambivalent about it in general.

This is a short novel that builds tension as the protagonist deals and fails to deal with her life, whilst exploring present and past political moments. It's a decent book, but I didn't find it as sharp or engaging as expected, possibly because it wasn't as weird or dark as it seemed to set up. Fans of modern novels that similarly explore a female protagonist's alienated outlook will likely enjoy it, and the exploration of Anya's childhood, family, and heritage is interesting and considers how people might view the Balkans in the present day, as outsiders or as people who left.

<i>The past keeps intruding. We are sick to death of it. I find I am not welcome in my own home. My own country.</i>

I enjoyed "Sympathy" in 2017, and taught "Exposure" in a class I was teaching in 2019 (back when I still had a job lmao) and so I was interested and intrigued to read "Asylum Road." Well, I am IMPRESSED. It feels miles above these previous books in terms of theme and scope. The confidence and control exhibited in this novel was genuinely striking to me. Narrated in first person, I was often reminded of Elena Ferrante (specifically in the last quarter, which gets more and more unhinged and intense) and of Rachel Cusk (in terms of the icy distance of the first person).

<i>Coming back was no homecoming for me. [...] I felt surer of my place there if I stayed away.</i>

The novel is structured around the idea of movement and displacement. There is a couple’s trip to France. There are two family visits (one to Cornwall, one to Sarajevo). There is a move from one house to another, from a flat to a “commune” on the titular Asylum Road. Most significantly, there is the narrator’s move as a child from Bosnia to Glasgow, her parents choosing to stay behind despite the war.

What most impressed me about this book was its extremely well-controlled use of flashbacks. They are selective and intense, often arising in throwaway comments and single sentences, like this one: <i>“Mira’s family had a dog, but a sniper shot it when it transpired dogs could anticipate a shelling.”</i> It is SO well-handled. Bravo to the author! I also found the theme of how to recover from war and trauma deeply fascinating - especially in the scenes where a fridge magnet of the word ‘Sniper’ is being sold for tourists, along with pepper pots made of shrapnel.

It’s also worth saying that I often found the book very funny. Anya is often quite dryly observational, at one point comparing the self-confidence of engaged women to <i>"expensive cats that have all been microchipped."</i> The family dinner in Sarajevo is especially darkly comical (specifically the way she abruptly shouts out her big news), or the part with the bag of plums on the plane. It also sometimes reads like a thriller, in the way it handles the slow build of suspense, the unsettling details, the feeling that something awful is going to happen at any moment.

I also really liked how the themes of Brexit, Trump, climate change, and nationalism were handled. It’s subtle and not over the top (unlike Ali Smith’s <i>Summer</i>). It frankly came as a relief to read a work of fiction trying to grapple with the contemporary moment in such a sensitive and intelligent way. The theme of the mother’s Alzheimer’s was also well-handled - I hate being beaten over the head with ‘statements’ (the Iraqi taxi driver was maybe the one moment that was a bit too much) and overall I liked how this book let me figure things out for myself. The jellyfish description, for instance, was really beautiful and subtle.

I wasn’t a huge fan of the switch into third-person at the end - I think I understand why it happened - to show Anya’s distancing from herself - and I guess kudos for not using second-person! It all gets a bit rushed and harried and intense in the last 15% of the book (again, probably intentional). But it all paid off for me at the end. I really, <i>really</i> liked the final scene.

Really, really enjoyed this. This is one of the most intelligent and interesting books about the 21st-century that I’ve encountered.

Many thanks to Bloomsbury for an ARC via NetGalley.