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Half Life
Shelley Jackson

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eanderson, September 4, 2006

It hardly does this novel justice to call it densely layered. It can be read as a satire of identity politics, a meditation on semiotics, a critique of the nuclear age, a murder mystery (of sorts), a love story -- that's just for starters. Readers who have dipped a toe into post-structural theory should put this novel on their desert island reading list -- there's plenty to occupy them here. But the story is so firmly grounded in the visceral and emotional that readers in search of an un-deserted beach read won't be disappointed either.

Comparisons to Nabokov are both inevitable -- the novel's first line pays homage to Lolita's opening -- and apt, as Jackson shares her predecessor's preoccupation with ambiguities of identity, authority, and signification, as well as all the opportunities for wordplay and symbology that these themes present. There are also shades of Delillo, Pynchon, and some sly references to Eliot. But Jackson's voice is also very much her own -- cynical, relentless, and very funny.


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