- Taschenbuch: 448 Seiten
- Verlag: Harper Perennial; Auflage: Reprint (3. Juli 2007)
- Sprache: Englisch
- ISBN-10: 0060882360
- ISBN-13: 978-0060882365
- Größe und/oder Gewicht: 20,4 x 13,6 x 2,7 cm
- Amazon Bestseller-Rang: Nr. 384.241 in Englische Bücher (Siehe Top 100 in Englische Bücher)
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Half Life
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Produktbeschreibungen
From Booklist
Jackson's reputation has been built on experimental fiction, including the hypertext Patchwork Girl. But here, in what is being billed as her first novel, she reveals herself to be adept with traditional narrative as well, although the story itself is far from typical. In an alternate-universe version of America, conjoined twins have become relatively commonplace, probably due to radioactive fallout (although twofer activists claim that history has covered up the fact that many prominent people were conjoined, including Copernicus and Mark Twain). We experience this world through Nora, who ridicules the twofer subculture (which includes its own hilarious grammar--theirstory instead of history; tyou instead of you, etc.) and desperately wants to be free of her sleeping twin, Blanche. The intricate structure and ebullient wordplay of the novel really begin to pay off when Nora and Blanche head to London in search of a doctor who will remove (and, in doing so, kill) Blanche, just as it becomes clear Blanche may not be sleeping. A clever and surprisingly moving exploration of identity and connectedness, Half Life should broaden Jackson's readership. John Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.
Pressestimmen
“A Molotov cocktail of highly combustible intelligence. . . truly glorious.” (New York Times Book Review )
“[A] shimmering, dazzling, delight, filled with ... humor and poignancy that should endear her to thousands of new readers. (Washington Post )
“Jackson’s style is as offbeat as her storytelling... with hilariously dark humor . . . intriguingly odd.” (USA Today )
“[E]ven in its most philosophical moments, HALF LIFE maintains an almost giddy flair for fabulism and macabre detail. (Time Out New York )
“[A] big, ambitious, deeply strange and strangely riveting novel . . . Maestra!” (Newsday )
“Jackson’s prose is nothing short of dazzling.” (Publishers Weekly )
“Haunting, meditative.” (Kirkus Reviews )
“Ingenious, sensual, gleeful. . . . It demands of its readers only imagination, and rewards them with hilarity, terror, and marvels.” (Jonathan Lethem )
“I loved this book. . . . Half Life is twisty and vampy and campy, grotesque, picaresque, droll, and dazzling.” (Kelly Link, author of Magic for Beginners )
“[A] shimmering, dazzling, delight, filled with ... humor and poignancy that should endear her to thousands of new readers. (Washington Post )
“Jackson’s style is as offbeat as her storytelling... with hilariously dark humor . . . intriguingly odd.” (USA Today )
“[E]ven in its most philosophical moments, HALF LIFE maintains an almost giddy flair for fabulism and macabre detail. (Time Out New York )
“[A] big, ambitious, deeply strange and strangely riveting novel . . . Maestra!” (Newsday )
“Jackson’s prose is nothing short of dazzling.” (Publishers Weekly )
“Haunting, meditative.” (Kirkus Reviews )
“Ingenious, sensual, gleeful. . . . It demands of its readers only imagination, and rewards them with hilarity, terror, and marvels.” (Jonathan Lethem )
“I loved this book. . . . Half Life is twisty and vampy and campy, grotesque, picaresque, droll, and dazzling.” (Kelly Link, author of Magic for Beginners )
In diesem Buch
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8 von 8 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
An exceptional debut
5. September 2006
Format:Gebundene Ausgabe
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. But Jackson's voice is also very much her own -- cynical, relentless, and very funny.
It hardly does the 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.
I've read more Amazon reviews than I can count and have never posted one before now. This novel drove me to it. Heck, I'll probably get on board for her tattoo project too, if its success will spur more writing like this. Jackson deserves a big readership and other good things.
It hardly does the 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.
I've read more Amazon reviews than I can count and have never posted one before now. This novel drove me to it. Heck, I'll probably get on board for her tattoo project too, if its success will spur more writing like this. Jackson deserves a big readership and other good things.
11 von 12 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
Almost brilliant...but then not
11. Dezember 2006
Format:Gebundene Ausgabe
The re-imagined world this book inhabits is nothing short of extraordinary. The minority "twofer" community holds a (cracked) mirror up to the gay and transgendered communities, feminism and religious minorities, pulling no punches with regards to any. Shelley Jackson has a rich imagination and a gift for prose and she knows it. During much of this book, I was rapt and swept up by the story.
What a disappointment, then, when it collapses into post-modern drudgery. Jackson lets her language get away from her in some passages (even after re-reading, I still have no clear idea of what happened to Nora and Blanche on the operating table), then completely loses her novel to gimmickry in the all-but-unreadable last 100 pages. The book's "Part Three" is so maddeningly self-referential that it's almost masturbatory -- a dull, seemingly endless list of overly thought-out entries in a "diary" that neither advances the story nor contributes fresh insights. "Part Four" tries to get back on track but instead settles for absurdity and evasion. Half Life's stubborn refusal to answer the multitude of questions it raises in its first three quarters could be read as Lynchian but instead comes off as a failed, half-baked writing experiment.
Too bad because there's a lot to admire in this book. I haven't read any of Shelley Jackson's other works, but I hope with her next book she drops the gimmicks and just tells a story. I'm sure it could be amazing.
What a disappointment, then, when it collapses into post-modern drudgery. Jackson lets her language get away from her in some passages (even after re-reading, I still have no clear idea of what happened to Nora and Blanche on the operating table), then completely loses her novel to gimmickry in the all-but-unreadable last 100 pages. The book's "Part Three" is so maddeningly self-referential that it's almost masturbatory -- a dull, seemingly endless list of overly thought-out entries in a "diary" that neither advances the story nor contributes fresh insights. "Part Four" tries to get back on track but instead settles for absurdity and evasion. Half Life's stubborn refusal to answer the multitude of questions it raises in its first three quarters could be read as Lynchian but instead comes off as a failed, half-baked writing experiment.
Too bad because there's a lot to admire in this book. I haven't read any of Shelley Jackson's other works, but I hope with her next book she drops the gimmicks and just tells a story. I'm sure it could be amazing.
5 von 6 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
Surreal to the point of incoherence
16. März 2007
Format:Gebundene Ausgabe
I picked up the book because the premise was intriguing, and it was compelling enough that I read all the way to the end. Gradually, though, it became surreal to the point of incoherence as Nora (or Blanche) experiences increasing hallucinations.
I'm not a lazy reader who can't tolerate any ambiguity or odd moments. But I feel that those pages should be a minority in a good book. Storytelling should come first. I am much more willing to wrestle with a difficult bit if I have something to work with. For the last hundred pages or so of this book, there just wasn't anything to grab on to. In addition, the frequent, unnecessary references to bodily functions were off-putting. If you like this sort of pretentious fiction, go right ahead- but if you like a book you can actually read, pick something else.
I'm not a lazy reader who can't tolerate any ambiguity or odd moments. But I feel that those pages should be a minority in a good book. Storytelling should come first. I am much more willing to wrestle with a difficult bit if I have something to work with. For the last hundred pages or so of this book, there just wasn't anything to grab on to. In addition, the frequent, unnecessary references to bodily functions were off-putting. If you like this sort of pretentious fiction, go right ahead- but if you like a book you can actually read, pick something else.
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