Half a Life, Darin Strauss
Half a Life, Darin Strauss
List: $12.00 | Sale: $8.41
Club: $6.00

Half a Life
A Memoir

Author: Darin Strauss

Narrator: Darin Strauss

Unabridged: 3 hr 8 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/13/2011

Synopsis

In this powerful, unforgettable memoir, acclaimed novelist Darin Strauss examines the far-reaching consequences of the tragic moment that has shadowed his whole life. In his last month of high school, he was behind the wheel of his dad's Oldsmobile, driving with friends, heading off to play mini-golf. Then: a classmate swerved in front of his car. The collision resulted in her death. With piercing insight and stark prose, Darin Strauss leads us on a deeply personal, immediate, and emotional journey—graduating high school, going away to college, starting his writing career, falling in love with his future wife, becoming a father. Along the way, he takes a hard look at loss and guilt, maturity and accountability, hope and, at last, acceptance. The result is a staggering, uplifting tour de force.

Look for special features inside, including an interview with Colum McCann.

About The Author

Darin Strauss is the bestselling author of three previous books. The recipient of a Guggenheim in fiction writing and numerous other awards, Strauss has seen his work translated into fourteen languages and published in more than twenty countries. He is a Clinical Associate Professor of Writing at New York University, and he lives with his wife and children in Brooklyn.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Will

In May, 1988, at age 18, Strauss was driving on a highway with his friends when a sixteen-year-old girl on a bicycle veered from the right shoulder, crossing multiple lanes of traffic. Strauss hit and killed her. Half a Life is his story of how he came to terms with this. It is reasonable to expect......more

Goodreads review by Peter

I don't really know how to rate this. Not because it's a bad book. It's a really good book. It feels weird to rate it. It's kind of like this: My brother taught some English classes at some colleges, and he made a rule that in the beginning classes he didn't want anyone to write essays about two thi......more

Goodreads review by christa

Anyone with a vivid imagination and a something ton vehicle who has ever cruised alongside a wobbly bicyclist has probably mentally played out this scene: Biker veers left into the path of the car, defies gravity by skirting up the hood, face pressed into the windshield, body tossed like a limp towe......more

Quotes

“Elegant, painful, stunningly honest . . . huge [and] heartbreaking.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Darin Strauss has spent a good part of his adult life reliving, regretting and reflecting on a single, split-second incident. Half a Life is a starkly honest account of that fateful moment and his life thereafter . . . penetrating, thought-provoking.”—The Washington Post

“A book that inspires admiration, sentence by sentence . . . This is a memoir in its finest form, a fully imagined and bittersweet book that transcends a single misstep.”—Chicago Tribune

“Painfully raw and beautifully written.”—Los Angeles Times

“A remarkable, beyond-brave memoir.”—O: The Oprah Magazine
 
“Lyrical and haunting.”—San Francisco Chronicle
 
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR AND THE PLAIN DEALER

Add to Cart
Add to Wish List