'Half my life ago, I killed a girl.'
So begins acclaimed novelist Darin Strauss' Half a Life, the true story of how one outing in his father's Oldsmobile resulted in the death of a classmate and the beginning of a different, darker life for the author. The police assured him there was nothing he could have done to avoid hitting Celine's swerving bike, but for half his life Strauss has grappled with desperate feelings of remorse and self-blame. Here he lays bare his history – collision, funeral, the queasy drama of a high-stakes court case – and what starts as a personal tale of a tragic event opens into the story of how to live with a very hard fact: we can try our human best in the crucial moment, and it might not be good enough.
Half a Life is a nakedly honest, ultimately hopeful examination of guilt, responsibility, and living with the past.
