Half The Kingdom

Half the Kingdom is a brilliant dark comedy about life, death and growing old in post-9/11 America a place where terrorist paranoia and end-of-the-world hysteria masks deeper fears about mortality; a place where the broken medical system leads one character to quip, ""Kafka wrote slice-of-life fiction."" Characters from Segal's earlier novels are part of the cast whose lives intersect at Manhattan's Cedars of Lebanon emergency room where doctors have noticed a marked up-tick in Alzheimer victims. People who seemed perfectly lucid just a day earlier exhibit signs of advanced dementia. Is it just normal aging or a coincidence? Is it an epidemic, or a secret terrorist plot? As profoundly moving as Joan Didion's latest non-fiction, and as thoughtful and charming as Diana Athill, Segal's crystalline writing and deep appreciation of the absurd make this most tragic and hilarious novel a joy for all to read.

About the Author :
LORE SEGAL is the author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Shakespeare's Kitchen, her most recent book, as well as the novels Lucinella, Other People's Houses and Her First American. She is the recipient of the American Academy and the Institutes of Arts and Letters Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, The O'Henry Prize and the Harold U. Ribalow Prize. She has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The New Republic and other publications. She also writes children's books and translates from the German. She lives in New York City.

Review :
"No one writes like Segal her glittering intelligence, her piercing wit, and her dazzling insights into manners and mores, are a profound pleasure. From first to last I loved this wise and irreverent novel." Margot Livesey "I always feel in her work such a sense of toughness and humor . Her writing is sad and funny, and that makes it more of both." Jennifer Egan "If America had anything resembling a wise elder, or cared to, it would be Lore Segal, and "Half the Kingdom" would be her moving, blackly-comic revelation." Shalom Auslander "I have never read such an astonishing book about old age. It s remarkable. This woman is one of the best writers I ve ever had the privilege of reading." Ayelet Waldman "Lore Segal may have come closer than anyone to writing The Great American Novel." " The New York Times" ..".rare insight into the human character that is at once humbling and shamelessly enjoyable to behold. " " Publishers Weekly" "One of the rare writers who combines art, eccentricity, honesty, and wisdom...." " Chicago Tribune" "Every now and then a piece of work bursts the bounds of its own conventions ... announcing the existence in our midst of a genuine writer." " The Nation" "A voice ... unlike any other I had ever known." Cynthia Ozick "Outdistances our contemporary expectations of fiction ... to maintain a lasting place not only in American literature but in that of the world." Stanley Crouch " "No one writes like Segal -- her glittering intelligence, her piercing wit, and her dazzling insights into manners and mores, are a profound pleasure. From first to last I loved this wise and irreverent novel." --Margot Livesey "I always feel in her work such a sense of toughness and humor.... Her writing is sad and funny, and that makes it more of both." --Jennifer Egan "If America had anything resembling a wise elder, or cared to, it would be Lore Segal, and "Half the Kingdom" would be her moving, blackly-comic revelation." --Shalom Auslander "I have never read such an astonishing book about old age. It's remarkable. This woman is one of the best writers I've ever had the privilege of reading." --Ayelet Waldman "Lore Segal may have come closer than anyone to writing The Great American Novel." "--The New York Times" ."..rare insight into the human character that is at once humbling and shamelessly enjoyable to behold. " "--Publishers Weekly" "One of the rare writers who combines art, eccentricity, honesty, and wisdom...." "--Chicago Tribune" "Every now and then a piece of work bursts the bounds of its own conventions ... announcing the existence in our midst of a genuine writer." "--The Nation" "A voice ... unlike any other I had ever known." --Cynthia Ozick "Outdistances our contemporary expectations of fiction ... to maintain a lasting place not only in American literature but in that of the world." --Stanley Crouch "Lore Segal may have come closer than anyone to writing The Great American Novel." "--The New York Times" ."..rare insight into the human character that is at once humbling and shamelessly enjoyable to behold. " "--Publishers Weekly" "One of the rare writers who combines art, eccentricity, honesty, and wisdom...." "--Chicago Tribune" "Every now and then a piece of work bursts the bounds of its own conventions ... announcing the existence in our midst of a genuine writer." "--The Nation" "A voice ... unlike any other I had ever known." --Cynthia Ozick "Outdistances our contemporary expectations of fiction ... to maintain a lasting place not only in American literature but in that of the world." --Stanley Crouch