Half the Kingdom - Hardcover

Lore Segal

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1612193021 ISBN 13: 9781612193021

Publisher: Melville House Publishing, 2013

Synopsis

Half the Kingdom is a brilliant dark comedy about life, death and growing old in post-9/11 America - a place where paranoia and hysteria mask deeper fears about mortality and the broken medical system. Characters from Segal's earlier novels are part of the cast whose lives intersect at Manhattan's Cedars of Lebanon emergency room - where doctors have noticed a growth in Alzheimers. People who seemed perfectly lucid just a day earlier exhibit signs of advanced dementia. Is it just normal aging or a coincidence? Is it an epidemic, or a secret terrorist plot?

About this title

Review:

"There's so much going on within the pages of this deceptively tricksy novella, it calls for an immediate re-read." --The Independent

"Half the Kingdom investigates the lacunae and surrealism of the memory loss that comes with old age...the writer weaves a frayed tapestry of recollection against the bureaucratic background of the U.S. hospital system. Protagonists are locked in narrative quadrilles, twirling with helplessness and fear, elevated by folklore's black humour." --Guernica Magazine

"It seems many of us prefer to avoid contemplating old age until we suddenly arrive there, but this remarkable novel leads us deftly into the heart of that twilight kingdom." --Daily Telegraph

'Both funny and astute, a dialogue-driven novel about a group of loving but egotistical people who seem daunted by the ceaseless passage of time and alienated by their highly individualized, technology-driven world. [Segal's] guiding voice is precise and unsentimental, bringing readers closer to the mentally ill with a skilful combination of vivid language and purposefully disordered clauses.' --The Times Literary Supplement

"Half the Kingdom investigates the lacunae and surrealism of the memory loss that comes with old age...the writer weaves a frayed tapestry of recollection against the bureaucratic background of the U.S. hospital system. Protagonists are locked in narrative quadrilles, twirling with helplessness and fear, elevated by folklore's black humour." --Guernica Magazine

"It seems many of us prefer to avoid contemplating old age until we suddenly arrive there, but this remarkable novel leads us deftly into the heart of that twilight kingdom." --Daily Telegraph

About the Author:

LORE SEGAL is the author of the novels Lucinella, Other People's Houses, Her First American and the story collection Shakespeare's Kitchen, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She is the recipient of an American Academy and the Institutes of Arts and Letters award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an O'Henry Award and the Harold U. Ribalow Prize. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Harper's Magazine, The New Republic and other publications. At eighty-five years old, Segal lives and writes in New York City.

About this edition

• Publisher: Melville House Publishing
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1612193021
• ISBN 13: 9781612193021
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 144