Half the kingdom
"A brilliant dark comedy about life, death and growing old in America told with Segal's characteristic humor, crystalline style and deadpan delivery--and her hilarious sense of the absurd. Half the Kingdom is a brilliant dark comedy about life, death and growing old in post-9/11 America--a place whe...
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| Format: | Books Print Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Brooklyn, New York :
Melville House,
2013.
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| Subjects: | |
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| Summary: | "A brilliant dark comedy about life, death and growing old in America told with Segal's characteristic humor, crystalline style and deadpan delivery--and her hilarious sense of the absurd. Half the Kingdom is a brilliant dark comedy about life, death and growing old in post-9/11 America--a place where terrorist paranoia and end-of-the-world hysteria masks deeper fears about mortality; a place where the broken medical system leads one character to quip, "Kafka wrote slice-of-life fiction." Characters from Segal's earlier novels are part of the cast whose lives intersect at Manhattan's Cedars of Lebanon emergency room--where doctors have noticed a marked up-tick in Alzheimer victims. People who seemed perfectly lucid just a day earlier exhibit signs of advanced dementia. Is it just normal aging or a coincidence? Is it an epidemic, or a secret terrorist plot? As profoundly moving as Joan Didion's latest non-fiction, and as thoughtful and charming as Diana Athill, Segal's crystalline writing and deep appreciation of the absurd make this most tragic and hilarious novel a joy for all to read"--Provided by publisher. |
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| Physical Description: | 167 pages ; 23 cm |
| ISBN: | 9781612193021 (hardback) 1612193021 (hardback) |
| Author Notes: | Segal taught writing and English at Columbia University, Princeton University, Sarah Lawrence College, Bennington College, the University of Illinois, and The Ohio State University. She has published short stories, articles, and reviews in such periodicals as Partisan Review, The New Yorker, New Republic, and the New York Times Book Review. Segal also wrote fiction for both children and adults. Segal received grants from the Council of Arts and Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts. She was a Guggenheim fellow in 1965-66 and received the Academy of Arts and Letters Award in 1986. Her book, Shakespeare's Kitchen, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2008. (Bowker Author Biography) |
