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.

"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.