Half a Life (McSweeney's)

Darin Strauss, author of More Than It Hurts You, will discuss and sign his heartbreaking memoir about how one outing in his father's Oldsmobile during his last month of high school resulted in the death of a classmate and the beginning of a different, darker life for the author.

“Half a Life is the best anything I’ve read—novel, memoir, story—in a very long time. Incredibly, it’s also the most moving."  —David Lipsky, author of Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself

“This book will break your heart. It’s a great and moving book about a boy becoming a man, and it belongs on the shelf with just a precious few others—The Catcher in the Rye, The Moviegoer, Joe Gould’s Secret. It should be read and re-read. It’s a treasure.”  —Rich Cohen, author of Tough Jews and Sweet and Low

Darin Strauss is the best-selling author of Chang & Eng, The Real McCoy, and More Than It Hurts You. The recipient of a 2006 Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction writing and -numerous other awards, Strauss’s work has been translated into fourteen langauges, and published in over twenty countries. He is a Clinical Associate professor of Writing at New York University.

Half a Life (Hardcover)

By Darin Strauss

$22.00

ISBN-13: 9781934781708
Availability: Special Order - Subject to Availability
Published: McSweeney's, 09/01/2010

Half my life ago, I killed a girl...” So begins Darin Strauss’s memoir Half a Life—the true story of how one outing in his father’s Oldsmobile resulted in the death of a classmate and the beginning of a different life for Strauss. We follow him as he relives his startling past—the collision, the funeral, the drama of a high-stakes court case—but soon, what begins as a tale of a singular tragic event, opens into a story about how Strauss came to live with one difficult fact: In crucial moments, sometimes your best still isn’t enough.

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