In "A Separation" by Katie Kitamura, the obvious separation is that of a married couple, a husband and wife soon to be divorced. But other types of separation are revealed, some that we all experience.
The nameless narrator is searching for her missing husband and uses her keen power of observation and imagination, speculating about other people, some close to her and some strangers. Of course, she assumes her speculations are correct. Her husband had asked her to temporarily keep their separation a secret and she did. She began to realize "there was a small but definite wedge pushing between the person I was and the person I was purporting to be." Later, she admitted to herself, "I acted on poorly defined sensations - what are called instincts and impulses." As she looked back on her actions, she thought, "I would be constantly aware of the gap between things as they were and things as they should have been."
Often, we get overconfident in our assumptions which limits our search for truth. We may have two separate personas, one private and one public. We can allow emotions to overrule logic which separates us from the truth. We may wish to change the past, but all we can do is learn from our regrets and change the future.
Katie Kitamura's nameless woman was a translator of the written word. The author and the narrator seem to believe "life rarely finds its exact likeness in a novel, that is hardly fiction's purpose." This well-written and enjoyable novel tells a story that could have happened and shows how faulty assumptions can separate us from the truth.
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