Why Halliday's Asymmetry works, and why it doesn't

Having finished the second section of Lisa Halliday's novel, Asymmetry, I can see that my surmise in yesterday's post was correct: The "link" between the two major sections of this "novel," is the "asymmetrical" distance from each other. In the first section, Halliday recounts in a 3rd-person narration an affair and friendship between a young editorial assistant, by all accounts much like LH, and a world-famous novelist who is clearly modeled (closely) on Philip Roth (w/ whom LH did in fact have a relationship). In other words, this section is as close as can be to a writer wring "what she knows." The second section, which tells of a 20-somethiung man, Aram, Iraqui born and U.S. raised, en route to visit Iraq to see his brother, who has repatriated to Iraq and is working as a doctor; passport control in England holds Amar up, and we see much interrogation of him regarding his complicated itinerary and, in intervening chapters, we learn about his family, some members of which still live in Iraq, and about a previous visit to the country. In other words, this material is something that LH does not know about from personal experience. On p. 225 she has a few intriguing paragraphs about a novel holding the mirror up to nature (as Flaubert and also Stendahl I think have remarked) while noting that sometimes the mirror is a reflection of the author and sometimes it provides an entirely different perspective. So there; okay, what of it? We have here to stories or short novels that taken together show the range of LH's talent, which is prodigious. Yet I have to say that neither section would stand alone well; though she's great at re-creating a scene and sense of place, and very good on dialogue, she seems indifferent to building a plot with any sort of narrative arc or resolution (resolutions are one of Roth's only weaknesses, btw); it's almost like this is a thesis in a graduate writing program - two exercises completed, A student. Would this novel have received such praise, let alone such attention, had it not been for its appropriation of the private life of a major literary figure?