About this Item
This is a true UK first edition / first printing, with the full numberline 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 on the copuyright page. Flat-signed by the author, in blue ink, with the dedication 'With gratitude for this wonderful festival, yours, Justin Cartwright, Edinburgh August 01'. A very nice copy of this powerful political love story, set between London and South Africa. By the Whitbread Prize-winning author of 'Leading the Cheers'. His novel 'In Every Face I Meet' was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Not price-clipped. Page edges could be a shade whiter. Overall, a lovely copy. We protect all our books with a removable plastic cover, and send them with care. Seller Inventory # 000784
Bibliographic Details
Title: Half in Love
Publisher: Sceptre, London, UK
Publication Date: 2001
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Fine
Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
Signed: Signed by Author(s)
Edition: First Edition
About this title
Richard McAllister, a young minister in the government, has temporarily left the Cabinet while recovering from being stabbed by a thug at a football match. He has decided, while recuperating, to go to South Africa to research a relative and his account of the horse in the Boer War. While in Mafeking, he is called back to London because his passionate affair with an actress has become public knowledge. From that moment, the love affair becomes almost impossibly fraught. The press hound them, the government spin doctors try to suppress all news and Joanna's husband becomes very vindictive. The lovers are parted, and Joanna goes to America.
This is a novel about contemporary politics, the power of film, the nature of history and above all about two people caught hopelessly in love, subject to the stresses of fame and scandal. It is an exceptional achievement.
What makes Cartwright's protagonists lively, multi-faceted and compelling is their acute and ashamed self-awareness. Both were attracted to power through "a desire for divinity" and as the media begin to control their every move, they recognise that fame and political success provide no protection. "Their love, which had seemed Olympian, had been directed down to street level". Like the war heroes of their past, their place in history becomes increasingly fragile as the affair and the attack accrue national curiosity and political repercussions.
Cartwright is a master at detailing the "amateur dramatic gothicness of Parliament" and the "range of small vanities" Richard enjoys. He also applies a shrewd satiric wit to the world of luvvies where champagne is the "PR antibiotic" and American English "more suited to the task at hand". As well as delivering a piercing critique of class and aspiration, Cartwright's delightfully urbane and fluid novel also investigates Englishness with the sharp, uncompromising eye of the outsider. "Englishness had become a self-parody", thinks Joanna, whose fame rests on "playing an icy English bitch ... a type that no longer existed outside films and plays". As the old certainties collapse around them, Richard and Joanna try to assemble a new code of nobility. Encumbered by values they once scorned, their journey from self-love to something more testing is extremely consoling, satisfying and humane. An excellent, highly contemporary novel about vanity and seduction. --Cherry Smyth
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