Half a Life (original 2001; edition 2001)

Sometimes I find it so hard to see past the characters to the analogy. I don't like Willie. I don't like his father. Story of Ana, please, or story of June or of Willie's mother or of Sarojini. Perhaps, as the Nobel comittee said, he can "compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories" but they are still the histories of men.

Perhaps it's my error, expecting to like the characters I read about?

Cruelly funny at times, and Naipul is a fabulous writer so it's delicious to read.
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My first incursion into Naipaul's work, I thoroughly enjoyed this gentle, compelling insight into a kind of life and lifestyle that is remote from my personal experience. ( )

It's nearly impossible to really write a review of Naipaul's Half a Life without including a gut reaction. The multi-layered threading of ideas presented in the novel are mind-numbing, to say the least. Every possible view and corner of race, social class, empire, colonization, education, and sexual politics are explored through the main character's life. Just as you get the sense that you are nailing down a "point" being made, the narrative snakes its way in a different direction.

Although I feel like I have read many books centered on these themes of identity, colonization, etc., I have to admit to feeling side-swiped by Naipaul's narrative style and message. Maybe I wanted a more neatly, discoverable message. Maybe it was the startling jump in 18 years in the narration that finally put the nail in the coffin for me. Or, maybe it was the oddly callous approach to sex (not graphically described in any way) that left me concerned by the main character's mechanical way of life. I wasn't so much shocked or appalled by Willie's life as I was concerned by his oddly disconnected, yet heightened existence. On one hand he was disconnected from every social group or culture he lived among, and yet on the other, he blended in and had insights into the hypocrisies of every group in which he mingled. It could be that this seeming "observation" mode taken by the main character is just the point? Willie really was as the title says, always living "half a life" because he was always an observer in every culture, position, circle, or relationship that he was engaged.

Strangely, I'm glad that I tackled Half a Life. In comparison to Naipaul's A House for Mr. Biswas, which I was familiar from a paper I wrote in graduate school, this later novel has a deeper sense of tension than I remember in his earlier piece. In Half a Life, the narration is linear in one sense, but splintered and fractured in a very deconstructionist sort of way that forces the reader to feel the instability of the main character. The concept of "still waters run deep" is a great way of describing the novel, in that the surface language and story feel smooth and uninterrupted, while the deep underpinnings of it are stirred and tumultuous beyond recognition. ( )

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1302708.html

Having enjoyed A House for Mr Biswas, I tried this as a follow-up, but did not enjoy it as much. Naipaul's protagonist is Indian, and gets a scholarship to study in London, where he starts to make a career as a journalist and writer; and then he abruptly goes to Africa with his current lover. The best thing about the book is the vivid sense of place of the three settings - the immediate post-independence period in India, the London literary sub-culture, and the African colony lurching towards independence: I really felt immersed in the settings, both the physical and human aspects of the geography.

That said, the book is rather frustratingly incomplete. There is occasional name-dropping of real people - Krishna Menon, Arthur Christiansen, Che Guevara; but I couldn't really understand the contrast between on the one hand this specificity about real people, and the very well conveyed sense of place, and on the other a geographical coyness. Why not name the Portuguese colony on the east coast of Africa? (There is only one, after all.) Why not be more specific about Willie's home town in India? Perhaps the point is to make it a more universal critique of colonialism, but I think it would have been more effective without the vagueness.

It's not a very cheerful book. Willie makes love to many women, but doesn't really appear to enjoy it, or to like them very much. I don't think it is misogynistic - Willie's sister, and his Portuguese African girlfriend, are both memorable charact ( )

This book slowed down some toward the end, but on the whole it was a beautiful, calm, and worthwhile read. Composed of stories within stories within stories, readers find how one character is shaped by the stories of those around him and those he incorporates into his own understanding of life. Naipaul writes beautifully, and the characters are both realistic and striking. Yet, in the end, I was left wanting something more, something more unified I suppose. It was a unified text, but I finished it feeling as if I'd missed something; I have a feeling that that's what a reader is meant to feel from the story, but it still left me somewhat unsatisfied compared to how I've felt in reading Naipaul in the past. ( )