RaveBookforumThe narrator spends listless days at the hotel, which Kitamura depicts in vivid set pieces that convey a mounting sense of doom...and [she] sets the story in a forbidding town, where impending violence is felt in the air … The narrator seems apathetic, but there is something subversive in the sullen way she fulfills her duties: stranded in a lie Christopher insisted on, she frees herself with quiet sabotage. When the police enter the picture, she doesn’t share information that might untangle what happened to Christopher. Her unwillingness to cooperate is another sly act of refusal … A Separation sneakily conveys the way women are trained to contain themselves and cater to men’s aspirations and whims, while also cleaning up after their bad deeds … Kitamura sees this clearly, and her observations are appropriately acidic, subtly exposing the punishing demand that women be both utterly passive and utterly in control.
