Grief is the engine of this surreal caper ... The novel’s alternating narrators keep things moving briskly, the limited perspective of one chapter delivering the comic payoff of the next ... Amid the dizzying back-and-forth, Waidner conceals a subtle exploration of midlife crisis.
Waidner’s tactic of switching selves...is wrenchingly funny and not a little poignant ... Waidner’s brand of anarchic dissonance and absurdist comic jolts buoy the novel along, even if the whole enterprise seems merely laughter in the dark.
Waidner’s craft is evident in the comically intricate layers of performance and mirroring that quickly accrete in the text; Korine and Lewis both mirror and perform each other, while the premise of the show, As If – itself adapted from a novel within the novel called … As If – begins to mirror the plot of the novel that we read ... Becomes a concise and clever take on Jung’s concept of the shadow self – a parable on the failure to accept one’s true desire, and to later find oneself haunted by the vestige of a former self.
Isabel Waidner’s writing, always dazzlingly clever and formally inventive, is here also deeply moving. As If is a great success and an intriguing departure: a dourly beguiling dark comedy about fluffing your lines halfway through the performance of a lifetime and being given another chance.
Surreal ... Set against an evocatively described, bleak London backdrop, Waidner’s most compelling novel to date is an ethereal, Beckett-like hall of mirrors that inventively explores the complexities of grief, selfhood, and identity.
Captivating ... Elevating their signature screwball style to existential heights, As If solidifies Waidner as a contemporary master of the novel. As If is a heady, humorous and deeply human read.
The novel is not as gleefully absurd as Waidner’s previous two, but their restraint turns out to be welcome. This is a stunning book with much to say about how grief can alter our life (or lives). A towering achievement from one of contemporary literature’s most original minds.
