Half-Life

by Aaron Krach

The geography of Adam Westman's life changes dramatically in the two weeks before his high school graduation. True, many of the familiar landmarks are still there when he looks for them; his best friend Dart riding shotgun; the suburban house where he lives with his melancholy dad and younger sister, Sandra; the on-ramps and off-ramps that connect his hometown of Angelito to Los Angeles's endless maze of freeways. But when death and love arrive at once and unexpectedly - as they often do - Adam learns that trouble sometimes has to rumble through a tidy world in order to make room for miracles.
Which isn't to say that miracles are such a big deal. For the characters whose lives intersect in Half-Life, the miraculous appears in the jumble of everyday details. Adam's emotionally distant mother finds herself drawn into the arc of family through the simple act of making a salad. Marc, Adam's stepdad, learns the subtle art of conversation as he shuttles Sandra to and from elementary school. Jeff, a handsome cop, decides to tale a risk and discovers in 18-year-old Adam the kind of openness and sincerity he thought other men no longer wanted.

Genres: Fiction, Gay, LGBT, M M Romance, Gay Fiction

312 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Aaron Krach is an artist and writer in New York City. He questions the value of objects by using ephemeral materials and existing distribution methods to create projects that require participation and collaboration. His artwork has been exhibited in galleries, apartments, and public spaces in cities large (Sao Paulo, NYC) and small (Ohrid, Macedonia). His “Insecurity” T-shirt was featured in the New Museum and his first book of photographs, “100 New York Mysteries” is in the library of the Museum of Modern Art and Yale University. As a novelist, Aaron’s first book, “Half-Life,” was published to critical acclaim in 2006. He regularly contributes cultural criticism to magazines and online. Aaron is the recipient of a Lower Manhattan Cultural Grant for Public Art in 2006 and 2012.

Reviews

[Jemppu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading updates.

[Blake Fraina · Rating 3 out of 5]

This deceptively amiable first novel tells the sometimes dark, affecting story of a gay teenager's last weeks of high school in a fictional suburb of Los Angeles. To his credit, author Aaron Krach avoids all the pitfalls of the typical gay youth novel; his Adam is already happily aware and accepting of his homosexuality and does not, during the course of the story, actually come out to anyone who does not already know. Instead, Krach casts a wider net, exploring Adam's complicated relationships with family, friends and, ultimately, his lover, to speak of the fundamental need for human connection.

Eighteen year old Adam Westman is a child of divorce. He and his world weary eleven year old sister, Sandra, live with their father, a school teacher who has suffered from severe depression all his life, almost to the point of being non-functional. Both children are somewhat estranged from their mother, who has remarried and is obsessively involved in her work running a successful film production company. It's not surprising then that Adam has grown up self-reliant and cynical. But fairly early in the story, a rather shocking tragedy forces the family, as well as several of Adam's high school friends and a dashing local police officer, into unexplored, alien, sometimes uneasy relationships with one another.

There is much to recommend Half Life. Without exception, the characters are well defined and mostly quite engaging. The storyline, of a dysfunctional family pulling together and re-defining itself in a time of grief (also explored in Trebor Healey's lovely Through It Came Bright Colors), is given enough breathing room to develop quite organically and believably. The love story, between Adam and Jeff, the thirty eight year old cop whom he meets under unfortunate circumstances, also plays out deliciously slowly. Unfortunately, the book's simple, poignant moments are offset by way too much extraneous dialogue (of the snappy, snarky variety) that slows down the forward motion of the story, not to mention making the book's gay characters (Jeff, Adam and his schoolmates Dart, Fran and Veronica) occasionally appear to be self-consciously glib and shallow. Plus, Krach portrays his only two straight adult female characters, Adam's mother Vivian, and Jeff's partner Sue, as outdated, vaguely offensive, stereotypes - the cold, de-feminised businesswoman and the desperate, calorie obsessed faghag, respectively.

But all in all, I found Half Life to be very enjoyable, as it offers an emotionally resonant, stylish alternative to the glut of LGBT coming out novels on the market, to say nothing of its odd, but strangely moving Raymond Carver-esque epilogue.

[Kyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm still not sure exactly what I think of this book. I enjoyed it, but I came away feeling like something was missing, and I don't know what.

The book follows two weeks in the life of the main character, Adam, and the various people he interacts with throughout. It's one of those books where it introduces multiple characters, and follows them around to see how they intersect in various ways. There are times when it's almost like a movie, where people just miss one another for whatever reason; I think it's to prove just how close people come to meeting all the time, although one thing might make the difference, but at times it feels awfully convenient.

The book was funny, at times, and at times it was a bit disturbing. Some events, like what happened to Greg, caught me completely off guard, while others were somewhat predictable, though considering that this is a novel about grief, love, and high school, that's to be expected. And some of the resolutions, after having built towards them throughout the novel, were extremely satisfying.

Some of the resolutions, however, were not so satisfying. Everything that had to do with Adam worked - it built and climaxed and resolved itself realistically and true to the characters involved, I wouldn't say that the same care was shown towards the other characters. In some instances, this was fine - these are secondary characters, and whatever happens down the road, it's fairly obvious that things will turn out well for them. But in two cases, I was left troubled over what might happen to the characters involved. Sandra, Adam's sister, was clearly traumatized by the events in the book, and the fact that her final scene involves her cuddling up to a mother who barely notices her is incredibly disturbing. And while Jeff's partner, Sue, has a happier ending, her building loneliness throughout the course of the novel was equally upsetting. Again, I realize that these are two random people in a great big city, and that their stories aren't any more important than the stories of anybody else, but I wish that we hadn't gotten so emotionally involved with them.

I've been wanting to read this book for a while, and I'm glad that I finally got around to it. I enjoyed it, for the most part. It's about people who aren't really good and who aren't really bad figuring out what to do with their lives - because all of them have been living half-lives as they move throughout their lives. By the end of the novel, some of them will figure out how to embrace everything completely, and others will not. And while parts of the book are incredibly disturbing, other parts are hilarious, or sad, or winsome, just like life. I had issues with it, but mostly I enjoyed it.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very sweet, moving and very memorable tale of two weeks in the life of Adam, a LA suburban boy on the threshold of life and his best friend (whose name I can not now remember - I am posting this review a good few years after I read the book - but who is also very wonderfully drawn character) and their life and world, family, etc. All the usual things but it is a exceptionally fine piece of writing - I am sorry there is nothing else by this author that I can lay my hands on - and the strength is there because the book remains in my memory - years past my reading.

There are other reviews on GoodReads praising this book - read them and believe them - I was tempted to give it five stars but I can't do that without rereading it - so take my word and theirs's and settle in for a first rate reading experience.

[Damon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sweetly written, this is an unconventional love story for modern suburbia. We all know these kids...they live on the edge of subdivisions, hang out at 7-11 and have real lives...or at least half-lives.

[Ranjit · Rating 5 out of 5]

ok...so the author was my editor a few years ago, so I can't be too objective on this one..but all i can say is...

gay sex with a cop....

[ash · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s hard for me to articulate myself about this book because it is wrapped up in an extremely specific sense of nostalgia for my adolescence — I grew up queer in a town very similar to the fictional Angelito (It’s actually unflaterringly name-checked in the book! Excuuuuuse me for being further east, man!) at almost the same time as the teenagers in the story (I was in eighth grade in June of 1999) with a vaguely similar parental figure who attempted suicide — and also an intense homesickness for southern California that kicked my ass a little (This month is seven years since I moved away.) but I will try my best?

This is SO aggressively Of The Time at which it was published that I felt like I was in a legit time warp. The writing is mostly fine, if in need of some kind of central thesis and a more aggressive editor, and I don’t even know the last time I saw third person omniscient! I thought I’d be more weirded out by it, but the shifting POV made for a kind of fluidity that I didn’t hate. The characters are plenty engaging and I like Dart enough that I wish it had been a split POV alternating between him and Adam instead. The very end is lackluster, but the end of the plot is pretty okay and I didn’t regret the time I spent.

I’m glad I went out of my way to find this on Ebay after I saw it in a Wiki about gay novels (I think I was going through by decade trying to find my wife her freaking book!!) if only to keep it on my shelf and flip through whenever I need a burst of homesick nostalgia.

[Shaun Winford · Rating 5 out of 5]

It has changed my life in ways I can't describe. Krach's skill of making a character come to life is impeccable. After the 321 pages, nowhere near enough to be honest – it feels like I personally know Adam, Jeff, Dart and the others. I just wish the book was much longer so I know what happened next to Adam and his friends.
The way Krach describes things makes me lustful for life. The emotional landscapes painted were very believeable and immersive. Every detail he put there might be claimed as redundant by many, but they're irreplaceable to me. And how I wanted to be there with Dart and James when they meet at the science fair, or with Adam and Jeff under the clear night sky of southern California in that eventful and magical night.
I have not enough words to talk about this book, but it touched me in my soul deeper than any has, in a good way. (other books touched me deeper in my school but left me devastated. this one didn't. just hungry for more, really).
Mr. Krach, if you read this. please write a sequel. It's been 20 years but we can still hope.

[Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like Half-Life more than I actually did. Unfortunately, the bad parts outweighed the good parts. If Krach has stuck to Adam’s and Jeff’s stories, the flow would have been better. But the pages and pages of pointless conversations with Adam and Dart and their friends were a drag and I found myself skipping through a lot of it. Despite the huge age difference between Adam and Jeff, I did enjoy reading about their weird courtship. I also thought the family dynamics with Adam and his father were interesting. Krach did a great job of showing how a parent’s mental illness can impact a family.

[Matthew Ramirez · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can give some slack for it being written in the early 2000s but its treatment of mental health was atrocious. Everybody was allowed to rag on the dad who died (TW) by suicide while they were dealing with their own emotions in unhealthy ways. Everybody overreacted to things way too much with their inner dialogue while their outer dialogue was very shallow. Nothing ever got resolved and nobody learned to cope with grief or learn more about mental health. Also very creepy that the main character came across as definitely childish and immature and the cop who was 20 years his senior found that sexy - super creepy vibes. Written decently well but the story was just not compelling.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this rich and satisfying. The author has a gift for capturing very complex qualities of character in bits of seemingly inconsequential dialogue. Indeed the complexity of the characters (even minor ones) - their blend of strength and weakness, intelligence and silliness really was a treat. And of course it's deliciously LA at the end of the 90s: you can almost smell the city.

[Elisa Rolle]

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 next 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.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1555838545/?...

[Mahala Helf · Rating 4 out of 5]

Judge this book by the beautiful & clever cover and not by the unfortunately narrowcast marketing & lack of copyediting. Yes,it's screenplay ready, as when a car with one character just passes by another unaware, the occasional tease and a troubling (to me) lack of exploration of the long term ramifications of the teenage son's intimate understanding of the depths of his father's depression. Yet you want a happy ending so much because every detail of the life & times of these people, and especially the way the talk, is so convincing in its individuality & specificity--in a place the author tells you up front is imaginary!You want to read more about these people. The "minor" characters are distinct and believable as if they have complete lives and stories outside the book--and you want to read more about them. Just about any line of dialogue could only belong to that particular character--is there a word like homonculus, for dialogue(internal & esternal) that crystallizes and embodies the particularity of an indiviudual in just about any random sample--not just her rhythm or his slang, but how they see the world?
Half-Life should be on the shortlist of best books about LA even tho it's mostly set in "Angelito." Also best books with scenes outside the 7-11!

"Inevitably, in this country, when someone regards you as a hypenated poet---as an African-American-woman poet, or a Latin American-gay poet...it's this condescension which is so insulting, because as a serious writer one approaches the art with all the rigor of non-hyphenate poets." Rita Dove, former poet Laureate & Pulitzer Prize winner. This is a good read for anyone who enjoys reading about families, teenagers, and/or 1990s Southern California.

[R · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes life is inexplicable - things happen for reasons that are somewhere out of our reach or grasp of understanding. "Half-Life" is both sweet and melancholy at the same time, dominated by characters that are at first confined by their insecurities, but then liberated by the seemingly unreasonable opportunities afforded them; a series of chance meetings build until each protagonist becomes almost consumed with the other. The attraction is both dizzying and disconcerting, but ultimately each meeting seems to affirm the two men of their interest. For me, the novel was nostalgic and warm, yet the background of Los Angeles and the seemingly endless, meaningless encounters of others all around served to highlight the unusual circumstances that lead to the meeting of these man - one is a police officer, the other a teen verging on graduation - each a part of the converging, bisecting nature of Angelenos, yet brought together by the death of a man. "Half-Life" reads as a snapshot of life in Los Angeles at the close of the 20th century, but is really a simple love story.

[Jon O · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was one of the first ever book I read. I was excited to read about coming out stories, and it would usually revolve around teenagers. I felt this book was written in two angles.[return][return]One was Adam dealing with his family. Heavy stuff.[return][return]The second one was Adam and Jeff, which was 'teen beat' stuff, which I thought was cute, except that I was already drained by the first stuff.[return][return]And maybe I was being silly, but as I continued to read the book, I kept wondering why not Adam and his best friend? Why did Adam have to wait around until he met a guy like Jeff?[return][return]But you know what.. for a book like this, which I have read years ago, and yet the story still lingers in my head, it has to be something special. Some books - I can't even remember the storylines.

[Andrew Duncan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book caught my interest at the beginning. Adam's interactions with his friends brought me back to the innocent banter I used to have with my friends in high school. I thought the plot was rather sloppy and uninspiring. Jeff came off as a stalker/pedophile rather than a romantic interest. Seriously, has this guy ever heard of a phone? It was just a creepy to think of a man in his late thirties lusting after a boy not yet out of high school. This most interesting parts of the story were Adam's family dynamics. His ideas about his family also reminded me of teenage year, except for dealing with severe depression in the family. Overall, it was a mindless read suited for young adults.

[Sean · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read "Half-Life" about a year ago. What I really liked about the story was that it stood out from what I would characterize as "typical" gay fiction in that it had more heart than usual. It seems gay fiction is more typically vapid, and light, and often heavy on the sex. One of my first thoughts as I got into it was, "I should have been so lucky," seeing as how I found my adolescent experience of being gay as less than fullfilling, or even just thrilling.

Aaron Krach is a talented writer, and I hope to read more from him that might be as well crafted as this story.

[David Tanner · Rating 2 out of 5]

As gay novels go, this one wasn't so bad as a coming-of-age story, but it wasn't that memorable either. I never seemed to identify with or care for any of the characters, except, perhaps Dart, whose story never gets fully realized. The ending is a little too sweet and convenient. Overall, I felt like the whole thing was unfinished, but since I also felt it was unbelievable, I was happy it ended when it did.

[Dan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a free book from the author from Librarything.
I finished the book, but the story didn't grab me until page 150; even then, there were times where I was missing something; I just didn't get it.
The writing was fine, I guess it was the story that didn't excite me. I gave it my best shot, at least I finished it.

[Beth Windle · Rating 3 out of 5]

By the end, Krach's writing style started to grate. It was somehow too cute, too precious.

I did like the characters, and the conflict between Adam and his father felt realistic.

The ending was anticlimactic in the extreme.

The cover is really beautiful.

[Lyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Simple and touching. Very wonderful epilogue.

And yet there's something really original about having a simple story like this unfold after the protagonist's involvement in a homicide-suicide as if the homicide part of it never happened....

[geoff · Rating 1 out of 5]

i would prefer to read the novelization of Honey I Shrunk the Kids than to have to attempt to read this drivel again.

[Julian · Rating 1 out of 5]

Awful stilted dialog

[Aaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yeah, it's my own book. So I definitely read it. A few times, actually.

[Anna · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is an entertaining book- I read it in an afternoon. I think it should be marketed as a "young adult" book.

[John Robin]

Well, I'll read