Half

by Sharon Harrigan

Growing up, identical twins Paula and Artis speak in one voice—until they can't. After years apart, with lives, partners, and children of their own, they are reunited on the occasion of their father's funeral. Seeking to repair the damage wrought upon their relationship by outside forces, the twins retrace their early lives to uncover what happened—but risk unraveling their carefully constructed cocoons.Written in spare,lyrical prose,Halfis an achingly beautiful story of intimacy and loss, revealing the complexity—and cost—of sharing your life entirely with someone else. Sharon Harrigan deftly explores how fierce lovecanalso be the very thing that leadsto heartbreak and betrayal.

Genres: Fiction, Novels, Contemporary

278 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 9, 2020

About the author

Sharon Harrigan is the author of the novel Half (2020) and the memoir Playing with Dynamite (2017). She has published widely in places such as the New York Times (Modern Love) and the Virginia Quarterly Review. She teaches creative writing at WriterHouse, a literary center in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she lives with her family.

Reviews

[Larry · Rating 5 out of 5]

I couldn’t put down this wonderfully inventive yet wholly believable story of identical twin sisters growing up in Michigan (which seems to be permanently buried in snow), full of family drama and abuse, magic, guitars and guns, and a deep exploration into the joys and sorrows of being identical twins. Written almost entirely in first person plural, the twins, named after Artemis and Apollo, are so telepathically in tune that the narrator is “we”, yet each has her own clearly defined personality. Harrigan is such a skillful author that this never feels odd or contrived. The prose is fresh and original, each sentence as taut as a guitar string plucked to a perfect note.

I don’t want to give away any of the story, because it’s such a joy to discover it on your own. If you enjoy contemporary American literary writing, this book is one of the best you’ll find.

[reading is my hustle · Rating 3 out of 5]

gorgeous writing.

[Margo Littell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paula and Artis are identical twins growing up in Michigan, so close that they share everything--even their thoughts. They speak as one voice, and their shared history has rendered them two halves of one person. Raised by a bombastic, grandiose, physically abusive father and a mother who let him get away with anything, the twins are united in their desire to leave their past behind. When they enter college, they get a fresh start, but the secrets they carry can’t stay hidden forever. When their father dies, the twins must confront for the first time the possibility that their perceptions of their father might not be exactly aligned--and that their shunning of him might not have been the mutual decision they’d convinced themselves it was. When a man at the funeral accuses them of killing their father, they can’t help but wonder if it’s true.

The novel opens with their father’s funeral, and the story is set up as a personal excavation--with the twins diving deep into their earliest memories to determine what truly happened, and where they may have taken an unwise path. For decades, Artis and Paula live with the belief that nothing will ever separate them, and they operate with this as their highest goal--even the win of only one sister in a spelling bee is an unacceptable proposition. Through high school and college and early adulthood, they live as one.

Harrigan creates a world that is closed and cloistered by design, but by presenting this narrative in the first-person plural “we” voice, she gives readers a clandestine entry point into the sisters’ most private thoughts. We get a glimpse of what such intimacy might be like; there’s room for envy of their relationship, even as they face familial dysfunction.

When the “we” finally splits, it feels as wrenching as it does inevitable. The twins’ culpability in their father’s death isn’t easy to assess, and any reckoning requires the unthinkable: a cleaving. This novel isn’t easy to forget, and the sisters’ voice--and voices--will echo long after the final lines. Half is an immersive, hypnotic exploration of a sibling bond as mysterious as love itself.

[Rick Bailey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sharon Harrigan’s Half is the story of twins, Artis and Paula, born into a blue collar family in Michigan. They are raised by a domineering father whose nickname is Moose (he tells the girls that living in Alaska he rode moose, “steering with the antlers”) and a submissive mother who runs a daycare center out of their house (a house that “reeked of warm milk and pureed peas, diaper rash and ear infections”). As the girls come of age, Harrigan explores the issues of identity, gender, and power in a narrative that is deft, entertaining, and satisfying on a number of levels.

The girls tell their story in one voice. “We” is the dominant point of view. The reader is taken into the mysterious interior world of twins, one of the attractions of this novel. They are essentially two halves of the same person. But each, being only a half, raises the question, Do they ever become whole in the course of the novel? Do they have a life and identity, one apart from the other?

And, similarly, do they have a life and identity apart from their family? In Moose, Harrigan presents a character who personifies male power and brutality. The girls think: “We knew to keep our family secrets.” While their father tells them: “If you tell what happens in this house, you’ll be taken away and never see your mom again.” There is love in this home, but it is love that crushes. In the course of the novel Artis and Paula learn and acquire power from their father while they also become aware of power they discover in themselves, power that is singularly female in nature--the other half of the human creature.

The story begins in the future, Christmas 2030, at Moose’s funeral. In the minutes after the church service, one of the father’s friends, named Wild Pete, says to the girls, “You’re the ones who killed him.” That charge launches this compelling story. For the reader, the rewards that lie ahead are rich. Sharon Harrigan has written a wonderful novel.

[coco's reading · Rating 3 out of 5]

My rating may very well change because I'm still not settled on how I feel. Which is sometimes nice: it can lead you to think more about plot and characters, about an author's decisions. That's definitely where I'm at a day after finishing Half.

I was drawn to this book due to the first person plural POV, but soon enough the premise and twins pulled me in as they recounted their childhood and the strife between them, their father, and mother. The way Harrigan wrote about an abusive household felt so honest, although I can't comment on that myself, and I was like the twins in that I never fully knew how to feel about their dad at any given moment. The "we" narrator, coupled with the writing (I swoon), the inspiration taken from Greek myth, and the twins' personhood being tangled in each other meant that I was hooked immediately. By far, their childhood and teenage years were the most compelling. The middle section (college, careers, marriage) stalled things for me a bit: partly because the dad was no longer quite such a looming threat, but also because I wanted to see more of this time, of the sisters beginning to separate. I was still engaged though. And then the ending happened. It's not poorly executed per se, and I actually liked how the story closed on a moment without full closure, but potentially attributing the father's abuse to Lewy body dementia soured the last of the book for me. At the end of the day, though, I'd be down to read more from Harrigan!

We girls were named for famous twins. Artis for the hunter Artemis, Dad reminded us when we whimpered that the gear he made us carry was so heavy it hurt. Paula for Apollo, famous for playing the lute. "I'll make you musicians," he said, "if I have to kill you first."

[Sarah Honenberger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Twins in a childhood of confusion and abuse where being together is protection and salvation until it isn’t. Harrigan digs deep, examines the special bond between siblings who share emotions and ideas without speech. No clichés here, the reader is drawn into a world of painful insights and like Harrigan’s characters, the reader is left with nowhere to hide. In short chapters and cryptic silent mental debates, Harrigan portrays a terrifying world where Dad controls everything, even the weather, and brooks no dissension. When the chance for escape to college comes, it also opens up a chance for a kind of revenge neither daughter imagined or understood. Consequences of not speaking out, of accepting the unacceptable behavior of their father, ends up aligning his wrongs with their own. Powerful and haunting, a hard book to read, a hard story to forget.

[Lesley Wheeler · Rating 5 out of 5]

This eerie tale of twins with a dangerously god-like father offers a fresh take on what it means to negotiate identity, sexuality, gender, and violence as a girl--as two fierce, talented girls in one--in the contemporary US. The pace is swift and riveting, even though the narrative style is surprising: most of the book is told in the first person plural. Harrigan's humane approach to these crises is also deeply moving. She honors the complexity of love and anger over time; pain and damage are real, but that doesn't absolve people from their failures and complicities. A great book.

[Clifford · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautifully written novel about twins who share everything, including thoughts. They think of themselves each as half of a whole and struggle with their abusive father until they are able to leave and go off to college, although they feel guilty for leaving their mother behind. The book begins, though, in the future, as they have returned for the father's funeral, and only then do we get the whole story from the beginning. The plot is not the point of this book--the language is amazing and the characterization of these girls and later as they become women is finely crafted.

[Rebecca Gummere · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this stunning debut novel, Sharon Harrigan unfolds a tale of mystery, love, loss, and wonder that keeps you guessing right up to the very end. Her gorgeous prose draws you in and her deft storytelling keeps you reading as layer after layer is peeled away, revealing characters you come to know better and care deeply for. It's been a long time since I've stayed up into the wee hours reading a book I couldn't put down. Harrigan's HALF is just such a book. Highly recommend.

[Susan DeFreitas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this magical tale of twin sisters named Artemis and Apollo growing up with a larger-than-life dad, who may or may not be the almighty Zeus. It’s such an elegant, artful look at father-daughter relationships, female rage, and family dynamics in general—and in the end, there’s even a bit of climate fiction involved. An excellent book for fans of literary fiction and family sagas.

[Leigh Rourks · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is both beautiful and impossible to put down. Told in the second person, its a story of impossibly close twin sisters and their struggle within a dangerously dysfunctional family. The language is haunting and unexpected, the characters boarder on magical, and the mystery at its center makes for a thrill of a read. My top book of 2020.

[Tucker · Rating 5 out of 5]

The narrators speak in such a surreal and strong voice, as if they know they are mythic characters who are half-wittingly, half-unwittingly leaning into their destiny.

[Deborah Prum · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read Sharon Harrigan’s novel, HALF, in two sittings. It was that good.
HALF is a story about identical twins named Artis and Paula, named for Zeus’s twins, Artemis and Apollo. They live with a father who is a monster and a mother who enables him. Told in the first-person plural, Harrigan credibly creates a magical world where the twins speak with one voice, read each other’s thoughts and sense each other’s experiences, even when they are miles apart. The magical realism does not end there. Moose, their father, can control the elements, flinging storms from the sky at will. Later, the twins believe that they possess similar abilities, that one can stop a car with her thoughts.
The prose is crisp and riveting, with much of the book sounding like a prose poem. Harrigan is a master at creating, sustaining and building narrative tension.
Moose is a father who intentionally harms his children both with physical and emotional abuse and by abandoning them in dangerous situations, yet this complex man is not all bad. Harrigan includes scenes where he tenderly cares for the girls while they are sick.
Moose is the king of gaslighting. His wife, Sera, (also called Hera) seems to believe every assertion he makes. Occasionally, she tries to make a run for it, but she always returns, figuring out a way to justify his abusive behavior. From an early age, the twins see through Moose’s contortion of reality. They name his cruelty, neglect and abuse for what it is. Interestingly, though, as adults, they begin to second guess their perception of shared experiences.
HALF is not always an easy novel to read. Although her descriptions are never gratuitous, Harrigan does not shy away from showing us what neglect and domestic abuse looks like and its long-term effects on a family system. The authenticity of this novel impressed me. The words rang true on every page.
Told in three sections, the story reminds me of a Greek tragedy. Moose (perhaps standing for Zeus?) is the flawed character who can’t help but damage all he touches. Sera is also flawed in that she chooses to enable a man whose actions harm his family. The twins play the Greek chorus, their one voice observing and commenting all that happens.
Three-quarters of the way through the book, I wasn’t sure where Harrigan was going. I couldn’t see how she planned to tie in a couple of the plot points. However, she did not disappoint. Harrigan crafted a satisfying ending that wraps up the tale by merging the two themes of the book: an exploration of the experience of identical twins and all that a life of domestic abuse entails. The story is tragic, yet there is a flicker of redemption at the end. I highly recommend this book.

[Jen Moody · Rating 5 out of 5]

Compelling story-telling, smart lyrical prose, this is the most satisfying novel I have read in ages. Twin sisters share a strong bond revealed through a series of memories they recall outside church on the day of their father’s funeral. Drawn through the past, experiencing specific events in their lives, the reader encounters evidence they marshal to explain what has happened to their dad, their mom, to each of them. These scenes, beginning in working class Detroit, create an engaging coming of age story, at turns poignant and funny, always convincingly presented in the plural present of we and us, one voice- an original and brilliant device. Half is a heartfelt, artful exploration of the imprint our families leave as we grow, and how our certainty of what happened, why and what it meant can lose clarity. This deep reflection, a seemingly straightforward review of the facts ultimately leads to tragic insight. The narrative is realistic, weaving in contemporary references from music to meteorology, even climate change, and yet there is a deep undercurrent, a mythical sensibility reflected in the magical twin thinking. Expanding into our hearts, each half becomes a hero, singularly aware of deep and irretrievable loss.

[Angel Gunn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This compelling, contemporary novel follows the lives of two twin sisters growing up in a factory town in Michigan with an overbearing and narcissistic father. From the time they are small, their father trains them in his survivalist thinking, taking them on hunting trips and teaching them to shoot guns. He projects his own dreams on them, forcing them to play guitar until their fingers bleed. Dealing with his abusive and overbearing ways, the sisters almost join identities. The haunting and lyrical voice of the novel comes from both girls, and the reader rides the waves of their merged identities. As these girls, who are named after goddesses, grow into teens, they find rebellion in their sexual identities and form a band called the Slutty Twins, which goes viral. As they approach college and womanhood, they grapple with their father's abuse and their mother's passivity, further merging identities, not knowing where one sister ends and the other begins.

[Fran Hawthorne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Author Sharon Harrigan has done what seems impossible: written almost an entire novel in the first-person plural of two distinct people-- the identical twins Paula and Artis -- so fluidly that the reader never knows who is speaking. This merged voice, moreover, is original, smart, and almost too intense.

Raised in Detroit by an abusive, charismatic father and a young mother who's more complex than she seems, the girls vow never to be separated. They marry best friends in a joint wedding and become pregnant with sons at the same time.

Inevitably, however, it's a vow they can't fulfill.

As the book begins, their father's funeral brings Artis and Paula back home, guilt-ridden that they'd killed him merely by wishing him dead. After all, hadn't he taught them that he-- and they -- could control the weather and everything else, if their mother would just stop "coddling" them? Now they must learn to re-define the meaning of family.

A fascinating, unique novel.

[Lisa Ellison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Harrigan’s unusual twin story hooked me from the very first line. She creates a world that’s so vivid and painful, we can’t wait to see her young heroines escape. And yet when they do, we mourn the loss of all they’ve left behind, and all they lose when the secret that bound them together is shattered.

This is a book about the “truths” we tell ourselves, and how a single detail can cause them to unravel. Harrigan writes masterfully about characters we love to hate and then makes us feel compassion for them. Her use of the “we” voice is flawless. As a sister of twin brothers, I couldn’t believe Harrigan wasn’t a twin herself. And what can I say about her prose? Every line is pure poetry.

Whether you’re a reader who loves hardscrabble tales with a twist or a writer interested in learning how to craft sentences with greater precision, this book is for you.

[Charlotte Dune · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVED this book! Amazing writing! It was like a novel in lyrical poetry and the sentences themselves were BEAUTIFUL. If you appreciate the craft of writing and lovely, jaw-dropping sentences, you will like Half!

The father's character was SO vivid and the mother character was really relateable. It really was unlike any other book I've ever read. I loved the Michigan, snowy, winter setting too.

I loved the current/future culture references, like viral youtube band, climate change, and the trans/ non-gender-conforming characters. Extremely well-written book.

[Suzanne Roberts · Rating 5 out of 5]

Half is an intriguing read. It's narrated jointly (in the plural we) by the twins. Though it took a little bit of time to get used to the plural point of view, after a while, I was all in. The writing is interesting and lyrical and the plot is full of suspense. By the end, there are some surprises, both in shifting points of view and plot twists involving long-held family secrets. I recommend this innovative and well written novel.

[Sean Kottke · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fascinating exercise in using first-person plural as the primary verb form for storytelling, which serves the coming of age story of identical twins quite well. It took me a little while to get into the story, and the storytelling style sustained my attention until I really caught the book's wave. The description of the freshman year experience at the University of Michigan is pitch perfect, which is remarkable for the 30 year difference between my time and the protagonists'.

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inventive, disturbing, gripping--an exhilarating page-turner! I was riveted and could not put this book down! Narrated by twins who speak in one voice (until they can't) this novel tells a dark tale of abuse and retribution set in Michigan by an author whose deft, lyrical prose and searing imagination is worthy of so much admiration. I highly recommend this debut novel by Sharon Harrigan!

[Louise Marburg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sharon Harrigan’s Half is nearly impossible to put down. Paula and Artis, identical twins narrating the story as “we,” are inseparable and fierce, navigating a childhood under the thumb of an abusive father. Through their eyes, in Harrigan’s sharp prose, the reader is guided through an indelible emotional landscape. Half is a uniquely crafted novel, unlike any I’ve read before.

[DJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel about the tumultuous childhood of twin girls coming up hard in the Midwest has so much heart and soul and ambition. Harrigan's voice is fresh, surprising, and inventive. It's got both gritty realism and magical, mythical elements. Highly recommended for fans of carefully written, fast-paced literary fiction. A beautiful read!

[Carole Duff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Both sweet and disturbing, magical and real, spare and richly beautiful, a masterfully crafted story. I read the book in three sittings: beginning, middle, and what an end! Twins sharing the same thoughts journey from childhood through adolescence into adulthood, transforming into differently gifted individuals and seeing their past differently, too.

[Liza Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

This afternoon, as the ice storm rages outside, I gave myself the time to finish a truly fabulous novel. HALF bu Sharon Harrigan is beautifully written and utterly absorbing. One of those rare books I find myself thinking about between reading sessions. The first-person plural point of view is masterful.

[BettyJoyce Nash · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading Harrigan's "Half" electrified me, truly a lightning-speed trip into the lives of twin girls, a world seen through their eyes, a world in which time and "reality" warp, unforgettably.

[Iris Rosen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved everything about this book. Beautiful writing.

[Lori Selonke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Story about twins growing up in Michigan. They are two half’s of the same person. Loved this book. Brilliant!

[Connie Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant novel by a writing teacher of mine. Definitely a page-turner. Highly recommend.

[Madeline Riley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting concept but the lyrical writing style is not for me. And I hated every single character.