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Half Life
by Shelley Jackson

Half Life Cover

Powells.com Staff Pick

Lots of books over the years have been compared to Katherine Dunn's classic Geek Love, but Half Life is the first I've read that even comes close to its mix of bleak, black humor and eerie, fable-like storytelling. Shelley Jackson's prose, though, is a marvel all its own. Grotesque, inventive, and moving, Jackson's unlikely story of a parallel world where conjoined twins are a sizable minority is the most unusual and accomplished book you'll read this year.
Recommended by Jill, Powells.com

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

A brilliant, disquieting first novel about a pair of conjoined twins who are deeply unhappy in each other's company. Nora, the dominant twin, is strong, funny, and deeply independent, thirsting for love and adventure. Blanche, by contrast, has been sleeping for nearly twenty years. Finally sick of carrying her sister's dead weight, Nora decides she wants her other half gone for good, so she leaves San Francisco for London in search of the mysterious Unity Foundation, which promises to make two one. And that one, of course, will be Nora — Blanche will be mourned, but not missed.

But once Nora arrives in London, her past begins to surface in surprising and disturbing ways, forcing her into a most reluctant voyage into memory. Something seems to be drawing Nora's thoughts back to the site of her rather unusual conception, birth, and childhood --the reconstructed ghost town of Too Bad, Nevada, where lizards skitter across the playa and "Shootout at Noon" comes every day. Searching for meaning and understanding in both her own and Blanche's past, Nora pushes herself to the brink of insanity — and begins to question her own, and Blanche's, grip on the truth. Grotesque, funny, intricately wrought, verbally and conceptually dazzling, Shelley Jackson's first novel is an imaginative and touching portrait of two lives in a cleft world yearning for wholeness — a world not unlike our own.

Review:

"A virtuosic but gimmicky fantasy, Jackson's first novel imagines an alternate present where chemical fallout has made Siamese twins a vocal, politically active subculture. Nora Olney, 28, is a torso-conjoined bohemian 'twofer' in San Francisco whose twin, Blanche, has been comatose for 15 years. At ease in neither twofer culture nor the single world, and accustomed to controlling her and Blanche's body fully, Nora decides to have 'doctor-assisted individuality surgery,' appealing to the shadowy Unity Foundation for surgical help — even though its legal status is uncertain at best, and it will mean Blanche's death. Arriving in London and threading through the thicket of misdirection that the foundation uses for cover, Nora's reality warps: inanimate objects talk; she throws things unintentionally. As she moves closer to the surgery, Nora must contemplate the possibility that Blanche is trying to communicate with her. Jackson — author of a short story collection; a 'work' (titled Skin) composed solely of tattoos on the bodies of willing participants; and the hypertext novel Patchwork Girl — gives equal time to the twins' eccentric upbringing in Too Bad, Nev., and the (often humorous) ephemera that Nora collects for her scrapbook, 'The Siamese Reference Manual.' Jackson's prose is nothing short of dazzling, but it's still not enough to give real tension to her oddball plot. (July 3)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Review:

"Half Life is a humane and heartfelt book...often goofy, always ingenious and sometimes magical." Los Angeles Times

Review:

"Jackson has imagination to burn, and her writing, strange as it is, stuns." Library Journal

Review:

"A clever and surprisingly moving exploration of identity and connectedness." Booklist

Review:

"Jackson's prose is stunning....Half-Life is a complex and often difficult book that is also quite funny and compelling." Balitmore Sun

Review:

"[A]n extraordinarily rich offering. Sexual identity, personal identity, national identity...the lonely heart of the human condition gets deliciously disturbing and daring treatment." Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Review:

"This is an athletic reading experience, exhilarating and sometimes exhausting. Jackson keeps the pace going with needle-sharp injections of wit." Newsday

Synopsis:

" In the tradition of Middlesex and Geek Love comes a stylish, fascinating, and sometimes disturbing first novel about one Siamese twin's plot to kill the other, written by a spectacularly cool and well-connected author.

""

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About the Author

Shelley Jackson is the author of the short-story collection The Melancholy of Anatomy, the author of the hypertext novel Patchwork Girl, several children's books, and "Skin," a story published in tattoos on the skin of nearly three thousand volunteers. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 1 comment:
eanderson, September 4, 2006 (view all comments by eanderson)
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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Product Details

ISBN:
9780060882358
Author:
Jackson, Shelley
Publisher:
HarperCollins Publishers
Author:
by Shelley Jackson
Author:
Jackson, Shelley
Subject:
Literary
Subject:
Conjoined twins
Publication Date:
August 2006
Binding:
Hardcover
Grade Level:
General/trade
Language:
English
Pages:
440
Dimensions:
9.30x6.40x1.41 in. 1.62 lbs.
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