In/Half

It took me a relatively long time to sink comfortably into the rhythms of this novel. One needs to be comfortable, for a time, with not having a very good idea at all about what's going on. The story is set in the near future, after a cataclysm has rendered electronic connectivity impossible. The stories of three characters are presented here, in an appealing mix of surreal and grubby. Coincidences and connections didn't always make sense to me but after a while I didn't worry about it--I was just swept into a world where I was very happy to spend the time it took to read this novel...a marvelous adventure of imagination that like all good speculative fiction gave me plenty of food for thought.

I found this book very difficult to follow as well as to get into. The story alternates between three individuals who don't seem to be related at all and will eventually collide in the final chapters. Evan is staging a theatrical production in Tokyo. Kras has a complicated family gathering in Slovenia. Zoja is a poet in NYC whose rabid fans are throwing a massive rave hoping that she'll show up.
I requested this book from LibraryThing's Early Reviewer's program because of this sentence in the description: "It is twenty-five years into the future, and a glitch in the global communications network is ripping a previously united world apart at the seams." However, the glitch and the fallout from it hardly seem to be mentioned, much less show more the point of this novel. The point, it seems, is to lovingly, wordily, and artistically describe the day-to-day actions of three terrible people and the other terrible people who surround them.
Actually, I shouldn't be so harsh to Kras and his family. About a third of the way into the book, I decided I had much better things to do with my time, but still went through and read the chapters about them. I was kind of interested in a couple of them as well as the seeming mystery behind the absence of Kras' oldest son, but there was no payoff to this at all.
The second star in this rating is wholly for the translator. As mentioned, Frelih is wordy and I'm impressed by Jason Blake's ability to preserve that verbosity.
Maybe I missed the point of this book, and it gets better at the end and even has a fantastic redemptive ending for these people. I hope so. But Frelih needs to learn to draw his reader in if he wants them to make it there, instead of alienating them with his repugnant characters. show less

This was certainly an interesting and at times very engaging tale. Overall I found myself tired of what felt like very experimental and self-important/insertion monologuing. The individual storylines were plotted well and moved along fairly nicely, but it felt like that cohesion devolved past the point of no return at the end.

Whether because of translation or the original writing, it is often easy to lose track of names, point of view, who is speaking, and place in time. It doesn’t seem like this disorientation is intentional.



Despite the lack of clarity, though, there are many brilliant expositions of spatial and experiential depth, and the narrative - even through confusion - is compelling.

It takes a lot for me not to finish a book. In the past, I’ve forced myself through novels in the hope they’ll suddenly improve, because I hate leaving things incomplete. But now, dear reader, I have been defeated. Perhaps it’s my time of life. Being in your mid-thirties brings a deeper awareness of mortality, and the fact that time is finite. Perhaps I have less free time than I used to have, and am disinclined to spend that time on things that don’t actually bring me pleasure. Or perhaps it really is the case that this book, like an obnoxious person at a party, just wants to show off that it’s far cleverer than anyone else in the room. That’s how it felt to me, much of the time. And so, in the interests of a full show more disclaimer, this is not technically a book review because I’ve stalled at 30%.

For the full review (and full frustration), please see my blog:
https://theidlewoman.net/2019/11/13/in-half-jasmin-b-frelih/ show less

I didn't find the characters likable. Evan is a junkie who treats people badly and has some awful habits (for one, masturbating over his balcony). I just didn't find the other two characters that relatable, either.

The book is also short on action, and the style takes quite a while to get used to. Choppy sentences. Fragments. Lots of internal monologue. Sometimes you like it. Sometimes it's tiring. Yeah, it's a little frustrating when the author seems to care more about style than about substance.

Not really my cup of tea.

I wasn't able to finish the book. The characters are extremely unlikable, and the story moves around a lot. I almost flipped through to read the parts about Kras and his family, because they sometimes made me laugh.