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Loading... Halfway House: A Novelby Katharine Noel
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. http://www.amazon.com/Halfway-House-N...  MsPibel | Jun 15, 2009 |  Angie Voorster is 17, a champion swimmer, great student, bright future, and a good family: mom, dad, and younger brother Luke. Then at a swim meet, she suffers a psychotic break, dives to the bottom of the pool during her brother's race, and her father has to go in and get her. Needless to say, life is never the same for any of the family members. They all suffer through the psych hospitals, halfway houses, disappearances. The family does eventually collapse under the weight of all of it, but each of them comes out the other side and makes a new and different life for themselves. An amazing book with real characters who have real flaws that make you come to care about them even more. An honest and open look at a family dealing with the mental-illness nightmare. (  ) CatieN | Sep 22, 2008 | The strength of this book comes from the raw depictions of mental illness. The reader really gets a strong sense of not only how it feels to live with a mental illness but also how it feels to have a loved one suffering with a mental illness. On the down side, the time line of the story is hard to pin down, there is very little real resolution at the end, and some pieces of the story do not seem to be tied into the progression of the plot at all. (  ) readingrat | Jul 19, 2008 | Halfway House is about Angie Voorster, a seventeen-year old teenager, who has a breakdown during a swim meet and eventually is diagnosed as being bipolar. The story is not only about how Angie deals with this, but also how her mother, father, and brother deal with it. We follow Angie's journey from hospitals, to halfway houses, to home, and back to hospitals. We also see her father distance himself from the family and turn inward. Her mother has an affair and her brother, Luke, finds comfort with girlfriends. He also struggles with wanting to take care of Angie and wanting to have his own life. I found the book interesting because the Katharine Noel takes us into life with mental illness from every family member's perspective. This is not only Angie's story, but that of her family, as well. (  ) julyso | Jul 17, 2008 | This novel offers insight into the experience of bipolar disorder and its impact on Angie, her mother Jordana, father Pietr, and brother Luke. It follows her initial breakdown in high school and the subsequent years of trying manage her condition with varying degrees of success. The support of her family is outstanding, and maybe a bit unrealistic...but overall a very interesting and insightful novel. ( ) Lcwilson45 | Jun 11, 2008 |  no reviews | add a review
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| Book description |
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Set in rural New Hampshire, Halfway House tells the story of the Voorster family, whose lives are upended when 17-year-old Angie suffers a breakdown and is eventually diagnosed with bipolar disorder. As Angie shuffles between hospitals, dorm rooms, halfway houses, and her childhood home, the side effects of her disease and treatment impact each member of her family. Her father Pieter, a Dutch-born cellist, retreats into himself, while her mother Jordana begins an affair. Angie's brother Luke finds comfort in his girlfriends, especially Wendy, whom he meets while at college in Wisconsin. Eventually, familial relationships must be broken in order to be reinvented. In the process, family dynamics must shift, and each character must confront their own demons in order to emerge on the other side.
From One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest to Girl, Interrupted, the subject of mental illness is hardly uncharted in modern literature. What Noel does is go beyond the disease to explore the consequences of crisis, both punishing and redemptive, without compromise or excuses. That is what makes Halfway House a wonder, and a pleasure to behold. --Gisele Toueg
(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:24 -0400)
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