Half a Heart

by Rosellen Brown

A moving story about estrangement and intimacy, race and privilege, identity and belonging from the bestselling author of Before and After

Miriam Vener feels trapped in the comfortable white middle-class life she leads with her family in Houston during the 1980s. That life suddenly shatters with the appearance, after almost eighteen years, of Veronica (Ronnee), her biracial daughter born in Mississippi in the sixties when Miriam was a civil rights activist. Hot tempered, sensitive, manipulative and deeply hurt at her mother's disappearance from her life, Ronnee has been raised by her father, a formerly brilliant college professor who forbade her to see her white mother. Half a Heart charts the emotionally fraught terrain of the mother and daughter's reunion and Ronnee's divided sense of self and loyalty. With which family, and which race, does she identify? How does all this affect her relationships with her newly discovered half-sister, her white boyfriend, and the father she is rebelling against? Half a Heart is a searingly honest novel of public and private ideals betrayed and hopes reignited by one of our foremost novelists.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Book Club

402 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Rosellen Brown (born May 12, 1939) is an American author, and has been an instructor of English and creative writing at several universities, including the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Houston. She has won several grants and awards for her work. The 1996 film Before and After was adapted from her novel of the same name.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Debra Hale-Shelton · Rating 3 out of 5]

I interviewed author Rosellen Brown in her Hyde Park apartment in Chicago for an AP story. This is the story of a white Jewish woman who has a baby by a black professor in 1960s Mississippi and lets him raise the child. She reunites with the child 17 years later. The book is a good study of the inner prejudices we have and how they can affect our lives. Are we always as liberal as we say we are?

[Lori Howell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written, good character illustrations. Lots of drama, angst, and thought provoking scenes. I grew up in this era and felt closely to the Mother, Miriam. Good book and will recommend to others.

[Amanda Harris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really intriguing premise and there were parts of this that I enjoyed. However, the dialogue was unrealistic at parts and the entirety of the book was so incredibly wordy, as others have said. A lot was left unsaid here and I think with a lot of the wordiness cut out, we could have had more story inserted.

[Tammy Adams · Rating 1 out of 5]

This just seemed too “wordy”, like the author was trying to impress me or something. It didn’t work. It just put me off. I feel like the actual story could have been interesting if an editor had really went to town with a red marker and trashed at least half.

[Nancy Mcdaniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I CANNOT GET ENOUGH OF ROSELLEN BROWN'S writing!
Book number three in the past 5 or so weeks.
I want more. I have loved all three of them so far. Onward!

[Steph · Rating 4 out of 5]

An exploration of family love and loyalty.

[Heidi Naylor]

Reading this now . . . trying to learn craft techniques from Rosellen Brown, whose stories I always respond well to. The story is the reunion of an upscale, white Houston mom with the (half) black daughter she delivered and then relinquished during the turmoil of the civil rights movement. I teach a class in research writing, based in the 1960s, and so this is especially relevant in light of what I'm always "into" from that decade.

The pacing is thoughtful (read: on the slow side); this is not a "chase" book, but the writing is lovely and the characters are so real. In one powerful scene, the mom, who's taken the newly met daughter up to her New England summer home for a chance to get reacquainted, runs into a summer friend and DOESN"T INTRODUCE HER DAUGHTER AS HER DAUGHTER. You want to hate her, but her flaws are woven with love and regret and a real desire to reach out to her (quite difficult) daughter, and you end up in sympathy.

Another great read from Brown: Before and After. But skip the movie, which was way underdeveloped.

[Alice Persons · Rating 2 out of 5]

The story was pretty absorbing, but the plot kept raising questions that bothered me, and I found Miriam to be unlikable and often exasperating. If she cared so much about the daughter, why did she make no effort to share custody, see the child, or even contact the girl for 18 years? Those glaring omissions were never explained. Her late-blooming guilt and concern did not ring true, especially since she was wealthy and privileged and there were no real barriers except her own cowardice and lack of character. Her reaction to the father taking the baby is to run off to Mexico and do drugs for months on end? Talk about a first world problem. I kept thinking that the daughter was better off with the father. I found the black characters in the book all more interesting and believable than the white ones. Another plot point hard to believe was Jewel's friendship with Miriam.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting story about a woman who has a child by her black lover while working in schools down in Mississippi during the civil rights struggles in the 1960s. He turns from a professor for music (classical) to a white-hating separatist. He takes away the baby from Miriam (Jewish) at 8 months. The story is about them, mother and daughter, reuniting after 18 years. An interesting exploration of the subtle and not so subtle ways blacks have to put up with discrimination. Also the difficulty of white guilt and guilt around money. Some of the scenarios were a bit overdone but mostly a very good read.

[Jean Perry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tthe 1st one of hers i hd read. It was a good characterization of mother/dgt relationships, black/white relationships, family/friends relationships. Much of the book is written as the introspections of the character being focused on at the moment, rather then dialogue between characters...............There was a lot of back and forth btwn today and 2 decades ago, that's not my favorite process of story-telling........................... There were sev'l places where the author was very verbose, saying in 200 words what could have been said in 50 and i skimmed thru much of that. There were passages that didn't have any effect on the story, IMO, and again i skimmed. A C+ for me.

[Marvin · Rating 2 out of 5]

It has a promising premise: a suburban Houston homemaker reconnects with an 18-year-old daughter she had with an African American professor at the black college she taught at briefly in the late 60s or early 70s. The father raised the girl from the time she was 5 months old. The story promises insights about race in contemporary America, but the characters--especially the secondary ones--are too stereotypical & the story a little too sentimental to deliver much depth, but it's always interesting.

[Judith Kirscht · Rating 4 out of 5]

A woman dedicated to civil rights takes in the daughter of her conservative sister. This is a story of coping with the polarization of the Sixties and resonates with the ideological split of our own times. It reveals the conflict between motherhood and ideology. I may resonate more deeply because I was raising a family in Ann Arbor during the tumult of those times and know the power of the Sixties to tear apart a family, but it is, I think, a good read for anyone who has faced ideological, cultural, class, or racial conflict within the family.

[Marguerite Hargreaves · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was highly recommended, but I found it impossibly overwritten. Our public library stamps its name on page 33 of books, and I usually give a book that many pages to get my attention. I bailed out after fewer than a dozen pages of this one, though. It felt like Brown was trying too hard to impress me.

[Monica · Rating 3 out of 5]

I just lost the long review I wrote so here it is in a nutshell:
-a 2.5 rather than a 3 because the writing is long-winded and bogs down the story
-premise so interesting, lots of point for discussion for a reading group
-really wanted to like this book, but ended up being disappointed

[Karen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I hate putting down a book when I am halfway done, but I just couldn't get through it. It was just too slow.

[Yolanda]

I didn't finish it. It didn't move me.

[Kimberly Jackson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think it was just me but I just couldn't get into this one like I have in other books similar to this one. Will read it again at alter date just to make sure it wasn't me.

[Gail · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed listening to this.

[Erin · Rating 1 out of 5]

This falls under the "I was so desperate for something to read I just grabbed something off my sister's bookshelf." Terrible.

[Joyce · Rating 2 out of 5]

It took me forever to read this. I struggled to identify with the mother, she never comes clearly into focus. Her daughter, Veronica or Ronnee is far more interesting.