Synopses & Reviews
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
"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
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"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
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"This is an athletic reading experience, exhilarating and sometimes exhausting. Jackson keeps the pace going with needle-sharp injections of wit." Newsday
Review
"Half Life is a humane and heartfelt book...often goofy, always ingenious and sometimes magical." Los Angeles Times
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.