A New York Times Notable Book The renowned New Yorker writer and Pulitzer Prize finalist delivers a hilarious, poignant, and profoundly moving tale of living, loving, and aging in America today
At Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, doctors have noticed a marked uptick in Alzheimer’s patients. People who seemed perfectly lucid just a day earlier suddenly show signs of advanced dementia. Is it just normal aging, or an epidemic? Is it a coincidence, or a secret terrorist plot?
In the looking-glass world of Half the Kingdom—where terrorist paranoia and end-of-the-world hysteria mask deeper fears of mortality; where parents’ and their grown children's feelings vacillate between frustration and tenderness; and where the broken medical system leads one character to quip, “Kafka wrote slice-of-life fiction”—all is familiar and yet slightly askew.
Lore Segal masterfully interweaves her characters’ lives—lives that, for good or for ill, all converge in Cedar's ER—into a funny, tragic, and tender portrait of how we live today.
“Lore Segal may have come closer than anyone to writing The Great American Novel.” —The New York Times
“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, author of A Visit from the Goon Squad
"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 is the author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Shakespeare's Kitchen, as well as the novels Half the Kingdom, 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, Harper's Magazine, The New Republic, and numerous other publications. In 2022, Segal was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Science. She has also written children's books and translates from the German. Segal lives and works in New York City.
View titles by Lore Segal
A New York Times Notable Book The renowned New Yorker writer and Pulitzer Prize finalist delivers a hilarious, poignant, and profoundly moving tale of living, loving, and aging in America today
At Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, doctors have noticed a marked uptick in Alzheimer’s patients. People who seemed perfectly lucid just a day earlier suddenly show signs of advanced dementia. Is it just normal aging, or an epidemic? Is it a coincidence, or a secret terrorist plot?
In the looking-glass world of Half the Kingdom—where terrorist paranoia and end-of-the-world hysteria mask deeper fears of mortality; where parents’ and their grown children's feelings vacillate between frustration and tenderness; and where the broken medical system leads one character to quip, “Kafka wrote slice-of-life fiction”—all is familiar and yet slightly askew.
Lore Segal masterfully interweaves her characters’ lives—lives that, for good or for ill, all converge in Cedar's ER—into a funny, tragic, and tender portrait of how we live today.
“Lore Segal may have come closer than anyone to writing The Great American Novel.” —The New York Times
“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, author of A Visit from the Goon Squad
Reviews
"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 is the author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Shakespeare's Kitchen, as well as the novels Half the Kingdom, 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, Harper's Magazine, The New Republic, and numerous other publications. In 2022, Segal was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Science. She has also written children's books and translates from the German. Segal lives and works in New York City.
View titles by Lore Segal
