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The Half-Life of Happiness (Vintage Contemporaries), by John Casey
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From the winner of the 1989 National Book Award (for Spartina), a major new novel--wise, sad, and richly comic--about the meltdown of a marriage against the backdrop of a gloriously awful congressional campaign. Charlottesville, Virginia, 1978: Mike is a successful forty-something lawyer, a onetime congressional staffer who's had it with Washington; Joss, his wife, is a filmmaker. They're Virginia liberals with a clan of close-knit friends--a bright, edgy, flirty, games-playing group, spinning like a Catherine wheel around Mike and Joss. But the sparks that fly between the two are getting hotter and more dangerous, as Joss' restlessness turns to impatience and then anger. When one of the group introduces them all to the woman he wants to marry, things suddenly explode--this new arrival and Joss fall passionately in love, and their whole world careens out of control.
What ensues is tragicomedy, as Mike tries to allay his rage and misery by letting himself get sucked into a trial run for a seat in Congress. He wants to be a hero to someone; instead he becomes the unwitting star of a political farce. Meantime, Joss is struggling with her new life, and their two young daughters (who form a lovingly unmerciful Greek chorus commenting on the action) have to navigate a turmoil in which one parent is a public joke and the other a private scandal. Rarely has the undoing of love been chronicled with such large-hearted humanity.
- Sales Rank: #996734 in eBooks
- Published on: 2015-08-19
- Released on: 2015-08-19
- Format: Kindle eBook
Amazon.com Review
Although The Half-Life of Happiness begins "For no reason he could think of, Mike felt terrific," the reader is not reassured. The details accrue with disturbing precision during Mike's walk across Charlottesville's Courthouse Square: clear spring sky, soft breeze, pretty tax specialist, bouncy tap-dance teacher, languorous bookstore clerk, charmingly stuttering woman doctor. Then we glimpse the house he shares with his wife and their two daughters: ramshackle, cluttered, incomplete--"a series of partly assembled kits for family happiness." Clearly, this is one marriage--one family--with trouble in its future. Of course, without trouble, there'd be no novel. Only in this case, the family is so fun, their circle of bright, articulate, bohemian friends so very winning, that watching them careen toward disaster has the same nasty inevitability as a horror movie: one wants to throw up a hand and say, "Wait! Don't go see what was making that noise upstairs!"
When trouble arrives, it takes the shape of Bonnie, the new girlfriend of one of their gang. Flirtatious and manipulative, with thin, "gobbly" lips, Bonnie seduces not Mike, surprisingly, but his caustically funny filmmaker wife, Joss. Watching his marriage crumble around him, Mike lets himself be persuaded to enter a congressional race that turns into a humiliating farce, while the couple's two daughters observe their parents' plight with unforgiving clarity. The author of the National Book Award-winning Spartina, Casey brings new energy to what could be a familiar story, and his take on the domestic novel, late 1970s style, is a masterpiece of finely drawn characters and meticulous detail.
From Publishers Weekly
Casey's much-admired Spartina won the National Book Award in 1989, and it's no pleasure to report that his new book is a rambling affair that gives only occasional glimpses of the shining talent on show there. It is the story of Mike Reardon, a young lawyer whom after a fling as a Washington congressional aide, has settled into a country practice in Charlottesville, Va. He has a feistily erratic wife, Joss, two bright little daughters, Edith and Nora, an adored mother-in-law and a circle of friends who seem like part of the family. Gradually, things in this seemingly Edenic existence begin to fall apart. A buddy kills himself, Joss's drinking becomes a problem, she begins a lesbian affair and Mike is talked into running an apparently hopeless campaign for Congress. Meanwhile, Edith and Nora reflect alternately on the course of events as they struggle to keep afloat in a turmoil of conflicting loyalties. The problem with the novel is that the reader never gets to know these people as well as Casey evidently does, which means that many of this long book's long scenes drift; there are numerous passages that could have used a stern editorial pencil. There are pleasures, to be sure: some of the scenes in the campaign are sharp and funny (if by no means as plugged-in as Primary Colors), and the concluding pages have a sweet dying fall. But the facts that Mike, for all his virtues, never quite comes to lif,e and that the girls sound too much alike, are distinct flaws in a book that depends on their conviction and weight. 50,000 first printing.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
In this latest from the author of Spartina, a 1989 National Book Award winner, fortyish lawyer Mike throws himself into a hilariously doomed run for Congress when his wife falls in love with another woman.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful.
richly textured, moving and insightful
By J. Mullin
For those wanting an escape from legal potboilers, books about horses and medical thrillers, here is a great summer read that may actually linger in your mind awhile. Reminiscent of Updike's Rabbit novels, Casey's Half-Life of Happiness is a richly textured, very moving account of the breakup of a marriage set against the backdrop of a fascinating Congressional election.
The characters come alive in the skilled hands of John Casey, who describes the couple's boredom, their inability to communicate as their world crumbles around them, and the frustrations felt by liberal Democrat lawyer Mike Riordan as he slips into middle age and is coaxed into a seemingly futile bid to run for Congress.
The story is one about relationships- at its core the novel deals with the breakup of Mike and Joss, but it works on so many more levels including the strained relationship between sisters Edith and Nora, as well as numerous effective passages involving the couple's friends, colleagues, political opponents, etc. The narrative focus changes frequently, but never in such a fashion as to disrupt the continuity of the plot. Overall, a very intelligent, moving novel of a family crisis written with humor, compassion and attention to detail.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful.
One wife short of a four star book
By Barbara E. Marsh
John Casey had a knack for capturing emotions through dialog or action. This is good for most of his characters. However, its bothersome for the wife/mother, Joss.
Joss (a film-maker) is married to Mike (a lawyer) and they have two daughters, and live in Charlottesville with many odd charcaters hanging around. Their life is turned updside down when Joss falls for a girl named Bonnie and Mike copes with the new arrangement by running for Congress and sleeping with his campaign aides.
There are plenty twists and turns in the plot and the characters are fun and interesting. However I could not find one reason to want Joss to ever appear on any page. She's as pleasant as poison ivy and just as much an itch. She lives to argue and argues to live. Her films are seen by very few and understood by even fewer. She seems to believe that Mike is just as much at fault for her relationship with Bonnie. Yeah, right.
I do think the book is enjoyable and recommend it. I just wish I could have offered four stars. Oh, Joss.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
Wonderful family saga.
By SV
I loved this book. Near the end I had to slow down to keep it from ending. This is a full and beautiful account of a family made up of people who are all quite appealing yet human, with all the weaknesses that humanity entails. It is the story of Mike Reardon's journey through the break-up of his marriage and the indignities of a political campaign. The point of view shifts between an omniscient narrator reporting events as they happened in the 1970s and the first-person account of Edith, Mike's somewhat embittered daughter, looking back from the present. This technique produces a rich and often humorous point/counterpoint portrayal of events.
The denouement, built around a final scene in which the daughters, Edith and Nora, drive to a family reunion attended by both their father and mother, took my breath away. I closed the book, but I didn't want to let go.
Thank you, John Casey.
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