New York Times Notable Book 2013
"At once wry and poingnant." - The New Yorker
"A masterwork...Both wise and deeply enjoyable." - Cynthia Ozick, author of Foreign Bodies
The renowned New Yorker writer and Pulitzer Prize finalist Lore Segal - whom The New York Times declared "closer than anyone to writing the Great American Novel" - delivers a hilarious, poignant and profoundly moving tale of living, loving and aging in America today
At Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, doctors have noticed a marked uptick in Alzheimer's patients. People who seemed perfectly lucid just a day earlier suddenly show signs of advanced dementia. Is it just normal aging, or an epidemic? Is it a coincidence, or a secret terrorist plot?
In the looking-glass world of Half the Kingdom - where terrorist paranoia and end-of-the-world hysteria mask deeper fears of mortality; where parents' and their grown children's feelings vacillate between frustration and tenderness; and where the broken medical system leads one character to quip, "Kafka wrote slice-of-life fiction" - all is familiar and yet slightly askew.
Lore Segal masterfully interweaves her characters' lives - lives that, for good or for ill, all converge in Cedar's ER - into a funny, tragic, and tender portrait of how we live today.
Genre: Literary Fiction
"At once wry and poingnant." - The New Yorker
"A masterwork...Both wise and deeply enjoyable." - Cynthia Ozick, author of Foreign Bodies
The renowned New Yorker writer and Pulitzer Prize finalist Lore Segal - whom The New York Times declared "closer than anyone to writing the Great American Novel" - delivers a hilarious, poignant and profoundly moving tale of living, loving and aging in America today
At Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, doctors have noticed a marked uptick in Alzheimer's patients. People who seemed perfectly lucid just a day earlier suddenly show signs of advanced dementia. Is it just normal aging, or an epidemic? Is it a coincidence, or a secret terrorist plot?
In the looking-glass world of Half the Kingdom - where terrorist paranoia and end-of-the-world hysteria mask deeper fears of mortality; where parents' and their grown children's feelings vacillate between frustration and tenderness; and where the broken medical system leads one character to quip, "Kafka wrote slice-of-life fiction" - all is familiar and yet slightly askew.
Lore Segal masterfully interweaves her characters' lives - lives that, for good or for ill, all converge in Cedar's ER - into a funny, tragic, and tender portrait of how we live today.
Genre: Literary Fiction
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