Asylum Road

Olivia Sudjic — 2021

"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.But planning a wedding does little to settle Anya’s unease. As a child, she escaped from Sarajevo, and the idea of security is as alien now as it was then. When social convention forces Anya to return, she begins to change. The past she sought to contain for as long as she can remember resurfaces, and the hot summer builds to a startling climax. Lean, sly and unsettling, Asylum Road is about the many borders governing our lives: between men and women, assimilation and otherness, nations, families, order and chaos.What happens, and who do we become, when they break down?"--Provided by publisher.

Reviews

fairuza hanun@silkcuttofu

Jan 1, 2024

Olivia Sudjic's ASYLUM ROAD was an emotional rollercoaster ride.

C/W: mental abuse, trauma, depression, animal death

Set post-Brexit, the novel seeks to unveil the affected micro haunted by the spectre of the Balkans. It opens with an interesting premise: "...it felt like the murders kept us together," which refers to a serial murder podcast Anja and her fiance Luke are listening to through their drive. It evokes the chilling tone this novel will carry. After Luke's proposal, out of social courtesy, they both travel to Cornwall to stay at Luke's conservative parents' house; then to Sarajevo, where Anja's living family remains. The road paves the plot's way, as most of the story happens there, and somehow, the road also alludes to the dormant presence of a trigger about to swerve Anja down a road I felt was inevitable. The confrontation with her past she tried to escape, starts the resurfacing of unpleasant memories.

Largely, I felt so terrified and concerned for Anja because she was such a vulnerable person and she reminded me of someone I intimately know. She didn't deserve to be mentally abused — neglected, othered, judged without being listened to — by the people she wanted to love. Her childhood shadowed under war, she craved for security. She receives it from Mira and Christopher [both my fav characters] but it's not one she needs; she thought marriage is synonymous with security.

The further the story goes, the writing sharpens whittling into her conscience till it was at its point of bare vulnerability. Every scene is conflicting between reality and not, perception plays a strong part in imagery. Sudjic writes in such vivid, spiralling tones, I found myself falling deeper into Anja's conscious; the black blur between reality & the self-consciousness, self-imbalance, unsettled in her mind. I come to empathise with her character. Within the depth of Anja's mind, Sudjic studies the personal impacts of the segregations between nations and families, assimilation and otherness, order and disorder, and, interestingly, sex and duty, which dictate our lives. How war continues to seethe even after years of 'peace.'