Half Life

by Krista Foss

A raw, absorbing, tender, and witty novel about a woman's long-overdue reckoning with memory, truth, and the multiverse of familial love. Elin Henriksen is a middle-aged single parent under pressure. Her formidable mother's health is declining, her fearless teenage daughter wants to leave but won't say where, and the new high school principal has problems with her unorthodox teaching of physics. And then there is the upcoming ceremony at the Art Museum. In ten days, a gallery will be named after her late father, Tig Henriksen, a modernist furniture designer whose sought-after cult pieces hide a troubled narrative. With a mixture of anticipation and dread, Elin prepares to reunite with her once-estranged siblings--Mette, a free-spirited singer-songwriter, and the serious, emotionally distant architect Casper--hoping they'll finally grapple with hard truths they've so far refused to accept. In the countdown to the event, as her daughter's risk-taking mounts, her mother's fragility intensifies and strange packages land on her doorstep (including a yellow-eyed dog), Elin's only relief is confiding to a dead physicist. Struggling with the paradoxes of truth and clarity, love and witness, genius and ambition, and her own ambivalent connection to her confessor, she inches toward confronting not just the explosive potential of memory but the costly fallout of silence. Told with dazzling insight, intelligence, and compassion, Half Life is a beautifully rendered story about family truths and the profound human need to be believed.

Genres: Fiction, Canada

328 pages, Paperback

Published March 2, 2021

About the author

“Krista Foss has written a morally complex, magnificently vivid novel full of characters who live and breathe. This is a dazzling debut.” –Lisa Moore, author of CAUGHT and FEBRUARY

Krista Foss has a combined BA in Economics and Political Science from McMaster University and a MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. Her short fiction has twice been a finalist for the Journey Prize. SMOKE RIVER is her debut novel and was published by McClelland & Stewart in May 2014. She lives in Hamilton, Ontario.

Reviews

[Cathy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really disliked this book. I made myself finish it only because is was a gift from a friend who “heard about it on NPR” and thought I would like it.

What a slog this reading experience was for me. Ugh. The narrative was disjointed. The unquoted conversations were confusing. I could not relate to, nor did I even like, any of the characters, not one. For me, this book lacked focus. Two stars because I did finish it, and did learn a bit about nuclear physics and physicists.

[Margaret · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rarely give five stars but this book certainly deserves it. One of those books you read slowly as you never want it to end. Once COVID ends will highly recommend this to my Book Club. We don’t love Zoom so have to wait.

[Jane Mulkewich · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this novel! Full disclosure - I am lucky enough to know Krista Foss! She has encouraged me in my own writing, and of course I had to read her newest book; and I loved it because of the stellar writing. From the first page I was captivated... by Krista's way with words, and by the story. I identified with the protagonist, Elin, as someone about my age who has been a single parent and who experiences the push and pull of life-long relationships with siblings. The way she wrote about these family relationships (her daughter, her siblings, her mother, her aunt...) was what pulled me into the story the most, although other readers may resonate more with Elin as a physics teacher, or the world of Danish modern furniture which permeates the novel, or Elin's mother who was once involved in the Danish resistance in occupied Denmark in WW2. I would like to return to this book to re-read it, and to discuss it with others, because there is a depth here that promises new insights each time I return to it. I am also looking forward to seeing Krista Foss at Hamilton's literary festival, GritLit, this weekend!

[J.H. Gordon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful writing, a completely immersive reading experience.

[Virginia · Rating 4 out of 5]

...Lilliana locked eyes with the Gestapo officer who'd taken over Bohr's office. He was rifling through the physicist's papers.
What are you looking at? he snapped.
The art, she said. Beauty makes us better people.
She didn't blink.

I started off at a loss with this book: my first reaction was acute disappointment that yet again another Canadian writer had set a book in the US. Not a big deal to most readers, I know, but it's always a sharp slap in the face to me to slog through another song of adoration to The Only America That Counts. It took several tries and an unprecedented 6 days to get through it, for a number of reasons. I do understand that the plot, the whole background of the story, makes Milwaukee a logical setting, but I never did get my heart out of the old canoe. It's a beautifully written story, once you get past the lack of distinction between speech and not-speech, and the rapidfire transitions between time periods (sometimes 3 on one page) that made some passages impossible for me to figure out. Every word and sentence and paragraph must be read and placed in its own time slot, because it's all important at the end. There's only one small passage referring to the event that made Elin's mother and siblings edge her out, and if you miss it you've missed the whole axis around which the plot revolves. I'm glad I stuck with this as it's been a genuinely lovely book with a rewarding ending, and I'll be buying my own copy to read again. Highly recommended to someone with patience and a high tolerance for nearly impenetrable dialogue, not to mention batty mothers and illogical siblings. 4 stars.
***BTW, my new most-hated word is "preternatural." It seems to be the new go-to pretentious buzzword that everyone and his literate dog is using. Ugh.***

[Eva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Single mother to a teenage daughter, Elin is trying to be the best mother, daughter, sister and teacher while keeping up with day to day mounting pressures. A physics teacher by day with a personal theory about her family background related to her passion, Elin makes recordings to her believed Morfar (mother’s father in Danish). Her daughter has taken a gap year and talks of travel to Europe. Elin has a tenuous relationship with her mother known as The Lilli who is a very particular and typical elder Danish woman who enjoys the finer things in life, particularly if they are also Danish. Siblings Mette and Casper are successful in their own right as a singer/songwriter and as an executive in an architectural design firm.

Elin’s father, Tig Henriksen, was a famous Danish furniture designer who died suddenly in 1993. The story takes place in the weeks leading up to the dedication of a museum naming in Tig’s honour. The family will all come together from their different cities to Wisconsin where Elin and Lilliana both live. It will bring back memories that Elin may not be ready to unfurl. This along with criticism from a new principal at the high school Elin teaches at and her daughter’s impending departure have Elin considering her future.

The character of Elin is relatable and well constructed. As a person with Danish heritage I can say that the patriotic attitudes of the Danish family were true to life. The familial relationships felt genuine in their difficulties.

I really enjoyed reading this family story but caution the reader about a few things that may not be to everyone’s liking. There are no punctuation marks to tell you when someone is speaking aloud versus speaking to themselves. Changes in time can happen quickly with no notice and often multiple times in a short amount of pages.

Overall I quite adored this book and Elin’s look at her family.

[Kerry Clare · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this novel.

[Dorothy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Elin's story was of great interest to me...so I got it out of the library.

Unfortunately, it does not use any punctuation to indicate who is talking. Since it is told from the point of view of the protagonist, who regularly talks to herself/shares her thoughts, it requires a bit of effort to keep up with the narrative switches. Was that said to her? or did she say that to herself?
Several times I had to re-read certain paragraphs to understand the plot development.

I gave up at Chapter 4.

[Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A story full of Moon Pies

This story is based on Elin, a physics teacher and her daughter Bets, who is an 18 year old student. The other characters are his mother, nicknamed The Lilli, her sister Mette and her brother Casper. Her father dies suddenly at the beginning of the book.

Throughout the book, the author shares with us the ups and downs of Elin, the departure of her daughter who wants to travel all over the world before returning to Milwaukee. Lots of scientific terms are shared so if you like science, you'll like it.

What I liked less was the lack of quotation marks when someone is talking. English is not my first language so I found it difficult to follow and even among native speakers, I found that they had difficulty following too.

Also, Bets who wants at all costs to know more about her father when he was never present in her life and it was her mother who sacrificed everything to raise her alone, I found that ungrateful from her daughter. The way she spoke to her mother was inappropriate.

It's not the kind of book I usually read but I liked seeing Elin's evolution as I read it.

[geo · Rating 5 out of 5]

oh my god???

this book just fractured every bone in my body and nestled into all the cracks and crevices of my brain. my whole body still feels charged with the intensity of my reaction.

i have a very mixed feelings toward characters that are similar to me or that i share similar experiences with, and way too much of elin felt like a mirror. do i love her or do i hate her??? so many moments felt like a dull kick in the chest (in the best way possible) <3

my emotional recations felt sort of dampened, for the most part, until the last 3 chapters. around chap. 28 i abruptly started to bawl and everything i’d been feeling in a muted way throughout the book came right to the surface and absolutely demolished me. iabsolutely could not have anticipated how this book landed with me. for the first 70 or so pages i was not really liking it at all, but it did a total 180 and i am so so glad i stuck with it.

a painful, beautiful, acutely captured unravelling. an incredible picture of the poison of trauma and the complexities of healing. thank you krista foss wtf???

[Danielle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Half Life by Krista Foss was not the book I though it was going to be. The story gave me reading whiplash by switching between timelines, multiple time during some chapters. The author has does a beautiful job with the descriptions, but I was not investing in the lives of any of the characters.

All I can say is that I am extremely glad I read this as an audiobook - I would not have finished it otherwise, especially after reading the reviews saying there is no punctuation to show when a character is speaking. I only finished this book because I was already 3 hours in and the part of me that need to know what happens was greater than the part of me that wanted to give up on this book.

[Jocelyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit weird but yet enjoyable story. Difficult to comprehend the timelines. Hard to determine who was speaking without any punctuation. I thought the writer could have wrapped things up a bit more clear. I had a few questions…

Spoiler alert;
are we to understand that all 3of the siblings went through the same bad thing? Elin blocked out the memories. She dealt with her issues through addictions & depression & self harm. The brain washing envelopes that were sent from Casper saying that her memories were constructed- More could have been said here!

[Michelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ugh. I'm having a really hard time getting through this book. The lack of quotation marks when someone is talking makes me crazy; I can't tell if it's dialog or description and sometimes have to go back and reread it. The writing itself comes off as pretentious a lot of the time. I thought I'd love it, but instead I feel it may be one of the few books that I can't force myself to finish. It really lost me at the Whippets.

[Sandy Kaarsemaker · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I found this book an effort to finish, it was worth it. Largely punctuation free and a writing style that flits around from past to present and back again, the author’s ability to weave words together to create amazing word pictures is incredible. Wonderful insights and observations follow the telling of a middle aged woman’s life, which is absorbed with her young adult daughter, her aged mother, along with her 2 demanding siblings.

[Michele · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book because it was about a Physics teacher and I used to be a Physics teacher. I think it only got a 2 (instead of a 1) because of that connection.

It really needed an editor…..rambled, so many different plot lines, completely unlikable characters, etc.

My 2 stars were generous.

[Not Sarah Connor Writes · Rating 3 out of 5]

I understand what Foss was trying to do, I really do, but Half Life was a hard book to get into. The lack of distinction between dialogue and thought didn't help, nor did the jumping of timelines without notice.

Read the full review on my blog!

[Nicole Ash · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to love this book but I found it hard to follow. Story lines were all over the place and it was hard to tell what time period you were currently in. I also felt like the storylines didn’t actually get concluded and all the questions that kept me reading until the end are still unanswered. Overall disappointing.

[Sariah Branham · Rating 3 out of 5]

A slow slice of life book. Enjoyable to read and good to practice sitting. The books themes are strong and compelling making you think along with the main character things such as what you’ve done with your life, how we give in to life’s stress and how being content with now means being content with your past and future.

[Skyler · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm only writing this review because while skimming the others, I found myself getting rather angry.
If you can only tell when someone is speaking based on punctuation marks, I'm sad to say that English class was clearly a waste of time.
This book is beautifully written, the time jumps are not "jarring," and everything fits, like a puzzle clicking into place. There are multiple timelines, none of which are difficult to follow.
There's mystery, intrigue, and interesting characters.
Its gorgeous, I highly recommend it.

[Mac Snider · Rating 3 out of 5]

3/5
And interesting read, but challenging with the lack of dialogue punctuation and the change in timeline without any indication. Interesting story that never really sets itself which leads to lots of reading between the lines.

[Joanne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Great premise but rambling thoughts, little punctuation and all-over-the-map ideas left me confused. What was the point?

[Vontel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unusual book.

[Sally Cooper · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful, brilliant novel, full of wisdom and heart. Unforgettable.

[Elaine Jong · Rating 1 out of 5]

Tried several times to get past the first 50 pages but just could not get into it. Too much verbal diarrhea.

[Suzy · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

[Jacquie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Omg, this was a struggle. True, there are some beautifully written lines in this novel, but they're smothered by the otherwise incoherent narrative.
I don't recommend this one. Clearly.

[Christy imworthyandenough · Rating 2 out of 5]

Made it to 14% - DNF

[Lynda Johnson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to love this book, and towards the end I kind of liked it, but even with a working knowledge of physics I could not be drawn in.

[Mcvalens · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sorry, 50+ pages in and I am done.

[Gayle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Definitely not the book I thought it was going to be. The writing was poor. I couldn't identify with any of the characters.