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The Other Half Of Me: A Novel (2012)

by Morgan McCarthy(Favorite Author)

3.2 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

1451668236 (ISBN13: 9781451668230)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Free Press

review 1: This was a well written novel by a British author I had never heard of before. The setting of most of the story is the family estate in Wales, with depressed mother Alicia, son Jonathan and daughter Theo trying to live together as normally as possible even though the family dynamics are nothing like normal. The grandmother soon returns after Alicia tries to end her own life, and things change even more. Theo grows up but doesn't conform to her family's or society's ideas of what she should be, and Jonathan tries to be her advocate, but eventually everyone in her family lets her down. The ending is bittersweet.
review 2: I feel like I've read almost this exact story several times before. Poor little rich kids, preferably British, raising themselves the best... more way they can without help from their dead/missing/indifferent parents. And I enjoy reading about that, and I enjoyed reading this book. But what blew me away about this book was the opening paragraph: "It doesn't take long to divide an old life from a new life - a few minutes, not even that. One quick, unfair blow, and you find yourself looking back across the uncrossable, to a place that can't ever be reached again, despite the fact you were there - brushing your teeth or reading a paper or wondering where you left your umbrella - just a moment ago. But that's over, the kind, old life, and you have to go out into the unknown, unbalanced world, where everything important is wrong. People vanish, the scenery changes. Things you loved become meaningless, and meaningless things stay that way." That's my life, encapsulated into one paragraph. Amazing. less

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