The Half Brother
From AwardAnnals
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| Author(s) | Lars Saabye Christensen, Kenneth Steven |
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| Subtitle | A Novel |
| Publisher | Arcade Publishing |
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| The Half Brother is a truly gripping, epic novel, hugely ambitious in scope and utterly compelling, a wonderful mixture of surreal comedy and touching intimacy. In stunning detail and elegant prose it relates the lives of four generations of a far from ordinary family. It opens on May 8, 1945, when 20-year-old Vera, hoping to celebrate with her mother and grandmother the end of World War II, is brutally raped by an unknown assailant. From that crime is born a boy named Fred, a misfit who later becomes a boxer. Barnum, Vera’s other son born several years… | |
The Half Brother is a truly gripping, epic novel, hugely ambitious in scope and utterly compelling, a wonderful mixture of surreal comedy and touching intimacy. In stunning detail and elegant prose it relates the lives of four generations of a far from ordinary family. It opens on May 8, 1945, when 20-year-old Vera, hoping to celebrate with her mother and grandmother the end of World War II, is brutally raped by an unknown assailant. From that crime is born a boy named Fred, a misfit who later becomes a boxer. Barnum, Vera’s other son born several years later, and Fred form a bizarre but special relationship.
Spanning 50 years, filled with a wonderful galaxy of finely etched characters, and structurally brilliant, The Half Brother has been both a literary sensation and a best-seller wherever it has been published.
Honors
Reviews
Barnes and Noble
The first work of Christensen’s to appear in English, The Half Brother brilliantly fuses the epic sweep of a classic novel with the witty self-awareness of the best contemporary fiction. Through narrator Barnum Nilson (an unusually short and troubled screenwriter), Christensen tells the story of a Norwegian family, each generation damaged by the sins of the (mostly absent) fathers and the rage of the mothers left behind.
Barnum, the youngest son of the family, slowly unveils his story, piecing together critical moments in the lives of each family member, from his great-grandfather, a Danish explorer lost in the ice of Greenland, to his half brother, Fred. Though Fred’s name means “peace” in Norwegian, he is the product of an assault on their mother that occurred as Norway celebrated the departure of the Nazis. Defined by his anger, Fred begins to disappear, first for days, then for weeks, and eventually for years at a time, until their mother insists on holding his funeral. But Barnum continues to hope for his half brother’s return, as if only Fred’s presence can redeem both the family’s failures and Barnum’s own.
The Half Brother is an enchanting tour de force woven with intelligence and grace, evincing that rare combination of page-turning suspense and substance that characterizes—dare we say it?—a masterpiece. (Summer 2004 Selection)
