Product Description

The masterpiece that Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, hailed as 'one of the literary must-reads of the summer' and that the Independent in London likened to 'Paul Auster's The Book of Illusions meeting Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections' is now available in paperback. 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 the end of World War II with her mother and grandmother, 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. 'I should have been your father,' Fred tells Barnum, 'instead of the fool who says he is.' 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 bestseller wherever it has been published.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1522509 in Books
• Published on: 2005-06-02
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 1.44" h x 6.32" w x 9.14" l, 1.93 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 696 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Epic yet startlingly contemporary, this massive novel charts 50 years in the life of an unconventional Oslo family, lighted by gleams of the frozen north and the glow of movie screens. Narrator Barnum, an award-winning screenwriter, retraces his family's history, which begins with the rape of his mother, Vera, as a young girl at the end of World War II. From this crime, Barnum's half-brother, Fred, is conceived. Fred is angry, prone to mood swings and outbursts of verbal cruelty. But he is also street-smart, self-reliant and fiercely—if erratically—protective of Barnum, a small, sensitive boy who never grows to full height. The boys live with Vera and an extended family of spirited, loving women, including the Old One, Barnum's great grandmother (a former silent movie actress), and his beer-drinking grandmother, Boletta. Barnum's father is Arnold Nilsen, an itinerant con man, who woos and marries Vera. When Barnum is almost grown up, unpredictable Fred goes to sea and disappears, leaving Barnum angry and confused. Barnum finds companionship and love through his relationships with friends Peder and Vivian, eventually marrying Vivian, but their connection unravels, particularly with Vivian's pregnancy—a pregnancy that torments Barnum, who is secretly infertile. Barnum's conflicted, complicated love for his brother anchors the novel, but Christensen tenderly explores all sorts of human connection, examining the emotions aroused by absence and persistence, and the complex nature of family and forgiveness. Like Péter Nádas's Book of Memories and Péter Esterházy's Celestial Harmonies, this is a challenging, marvelously rich novel steeped in European history and charged by present-day anxieties.
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