Regular marked price: $14.95Discount Price: $13.45
Cost Savings: $1.50 (10%)Price fluctuation possible.
How soon does it ship: Normal ship time within one day
Shipping? Absolutely FREE if you qualify for Super Saver Shipping.
Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN num: 9781555838546
ISBN number: 1555838545
Label: Alyson Books
Manufacturer: Alyson Books
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 312
Printing Date: May 01, 2004
Publishing house: Alyson Books
Sale Popularity Level: 375672
Studio: Alyson Books
Other books you might be interested in perusing:
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
During the last year of the 20th century, 18-year-old Adam Westman finds himself 'on the verge of manhood,' as his best friend Dart likes to say. He lives in the exact center of center-less Los Angeles with his depressed father, Greg, and imaginative younger sister, Sandra. When Greg suddenly dies, more than everything changes and the relatively smooth orbits of family and friends are altered when Adam needs them most. In the middle of the drama, a man in uniform appears-and he is more than interested in Adam. This man, a policeman, is warm, witty and wise. He is 6 foot-something, dirty blond, and . . . well, he's a California Boy trapped inside the body of a 38 year-old man. But how can Adam consider the possibility of a relationship when he is dealing with his father's death, his friends' (and his own) pre-pre-pre mid-life crises, his mother's ambivalence, and his little sister's need for him? Then again, how can he not?
Half-Life is about being-or at least feeling-young and old at the same time. About loving, or wanting to love, but knowing that life and love are both as exuberant and seductive yet two-dimensional and illusory as a billboard along any of Los Angeles's endless freeways.
Aaron Krach has written for Time Out New York, Out magazine, InStyle, thePosition.com, CBSHealthwatch.com, The Independent Film and Video Monthly, TVTS, Oui, DOX: International Documentary Film, indieWIRE, A&U magazine Instinct, HX, The Villager, Downtown Express, and TWN (Florida). The former editor of Empire Magazine and arts editor of Gay City News, he is now the senior editor of Cargo magazine. He lives in New York City. Half-Life is his very first novel.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
-
Half-life is not an easy story, above all for who, like me, has suffered a loss of a dear one: how can Adam behave in that way? The book follows two weeks in the life of Adam (starting the 6 of June 1999, 6/6/99, you can up turn the date and it is always 6699, it's just a case?), a 18 years old gay boy from Angelito, an imaginary suburb town of Los Angeles.
Adam being gay is not the main issue in the story, and this maybe makes this book different from the usual coming of age stories; Adam has not hidden secrets, unbearable pains or vengeance feelings. Adam is gay, but so is his best friend Dart and his friend Fran, who has two "moms" and a girlfriend. Adam is gay and it seems that no one has a problem with it... and maybe this is the problem: Adam craves the attention of his family, but they are inhexistent. When Adam's mother divorced from her husband, she apparently divorced also from her children and now they see her every other weekends, if she is not too taken with her work and with her new up-class lifestyle and husband. Adam's father is depressed, he didn't expect his life to be like that, he loves his children, but now that they start to be independent, he seems to not have any more reason to live. He is clearly in a down fall phase and it seems that only Adam sees that.
Adam wants to be a teen, he has the right to be a teen, but in this situation it's not possible for him; his teen years are running away, high school is near to end and adulthood is around the corner. All his friends are craving to reach the point, all of them but Adam. And to make the thing worst, Adam meets Jeff, 38 years old cop and gay. Where Adam is older than his age, Jeff is younger. He realized later in his life what he wanted to be, and so now he is still in a growing phase, he is still learning from life and he is still building his future.
There are big life changing events in the book, but it seems like they are in an undertone; it's like if you are waiting for something to happen, time is hanging up, but when something happens, it's not yet the trigger event, and so you go on waiting for the subsequent one. In the end nothing happens and all happens... since what it seems big from a near perspective, in the big game of life is only a little piece without importance.
Half-life is more a novel about details than the telling of the "great discovery" of Adam; Adam doesn't need to grow, he just did that. Maybe this is the most unsettling thing of the book... the reader is waiting for something that will change Adam, and instead all happens around him, and he stays alike; he has so much protective layers around him that nothing apparently arms him... but then, it's only two insignificant weeks... a great loss, graduation, a new lover... for everyone else but Adam, changing life events, for Adam a reason more to add a protective layer around him. What, or who, or when he will let go all his layers you didn't know.
Rated by buyers 
-
I found this book to be a bit of a disappointment. My biggest complaint is that none of the characters are developed to the point where I, as a reader, could relate to them or, for that matter, care about them. We know Adam, the main character, is gay, we know he had trouble with his father, but beyond that there are no real insights into his personality. Furthermore, the relationship between Adam and Jeff is so under developed that I not only found it unbelievable but also a little bit disturbing; I think more complex interactions are needed to justify a thirty-eight year old cop making advances on an eighteen year old who was involved in a case he was investigating other than what happened in the book. I found the sex scene at the end, therefore, to be more than a little creepy; the only thing that I could think of while reading it was "this man is almost forty years old and is taking advantage of an eighteen year old high school kid whose emotional well being he has openly questioned". This book did have its moments, however, and I found it most enjoyable when the story was focusing on Dart and his potential romance. It wasn't a horrible book but I wouldn't be quick to recommend it.
Rated by buyers -
It's refreshing to have a novel about gay teenagers that ISN'T a typical gay teen novel. "Half-Life" doesn't focus on the usual cliches that come with the territory: coming out, telling one's folks, dealing with rejection by friends etc. Krach tells a different type of tale that's original and unusual. In this story, the parents are not moralists who only exist in their homes to pass judgement and dole out punishment, but they are fleshed-out and flawed. The theme of sexual attraction across age gaps, so often seen as taboo, is explored with intelligence rather than knee-jerk skittishness.
The character of Greg, Adam's father, stands out in particular as making me feel sympathy for him one moment, and the subsequent wanting to shake him out of his stupor. Greg is such an interesting character that even when his part of the story is completed, he still haunts the rest of the novel. The climactic scene between Greg and his son Adam is disturbing and is one of the more memorable scenes in fiction that I've read lately.
"Half-Life" is a good very first novel and it's too bad that so many books with gay themes are relegated to a certain section of a bookstore, (if at all.) This book transcends labels and stands on its own as a complete and satisfying work of fiction.
Rated by buyers -
Krach, Aaron. "Half Life", Alyson 2004
Needing to Connect
Amos Lassen and Literary Pride
Aaron Krach's "Half Life" is an emotional and moving novel as it tells the story of the last weeks of a gay teenager in high school in a Los Angles suburb. Adam Westman is young, gay and knows it--he has no real problem with his sexuality. His parents are divorced and he and his eleven year old sister live with his father. His father is a teacher who suffers from severe depression. His mother, now remarried, is head of a film production company and she does have much to do with her children until the death of her ex-husband when the children move in with her. Adam is quite cynical and self-reliant.
"Half Life" looks at Adam's relationships--with family, with friends, with his boyfriend and one thing becomes very clear. What Adam needs is some form of human connection. When a strange and shocking tragedy forces both his family and several of his friends and a good-looking police officer into an uneasy relationship, the novel takes off.
Dysfunctional families have become quite popular in literature lately. This time we see how the family, which is anything but "regular", pulls together and redefines itself. Adam and Jeff, the police officer begin, to build a relationship under very odd circumstances but it is a wonderful study of the human condition and how the need for friends is so important.
Jeff is a good deal older than Adam. He is 38 and Adam is 17. We do not learn why Jeff pursues Adam--Jeff is closeted. When he becomes involved in the investigation of Adam's father's death, he discovers that he has "affection" for Adam. Jeff begins to "shower" Adam with affection ad Adam must come to terms with what love is at the same time that he is forced in dealing with the death of his father.
While the novel leaves a lot to desire grammatically, it makes up for that in the way that Krach deals with his characters. The book is a wonderful exercise in character study. Krach shows us what s going on in the minds and lives of urban kids who happen to be gay. As we follow Adam as he deals with his emotions about Jeff, we meet the supporting characters as they all pass a summer together and search for and find the answers to the challenges of life. While Adam and Jeff progress slowly, they and Adam's friends learn of the value of friendship.
What I thought was going to be a coming of age story turned out to be just that as well as a story of young love. Adam seems to have been born melancholy and we watch him overcome his sadness. Through the dialog of the novel, we see the fears that our characters face and how they learn to become comfortable with themselves.
Rated by buyers 
-
I very much enjoyed reading this book. I found it almost a thriller just waiting for someone to make a move. When reading it, it was crushing what happens to bring these two men together. Although I think the both got what he wanted in the end. Well it was very exciting watching them play this game from very first glance to very first kiss.
Find other books like this one:
