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A review by helpfulsnowman
Half a Life by Darin Strauss
4.0
I don't really know how to rate this. Not because it's a bad book. It's a really good book. It feels weird to rate it.
It's kind of like this: My brother taught some English classes at some colleges, and he made a rule that in the beginning classes he didn't want anyone to write essays about two things: Marijuana legalization and personal rape stories. The first because he'd just read too many that covered the same ground. The second sounds a little cold-hearted, but I can get behind his reasoning. He said that it was impossible to grade them. Imagine someone pouring her heart out regarding a terrible personal violation, but looking at it honestly and finding that it was rife with grammatical errors and misspellings. Grading the story of someone's rape just seemed methodical and bizarre, and it made it very difficult for him to ever assign a bad grade, which in some cases may have been an honest grade.
That's kind of how I feel about this book. It's a good book, but it's so deeply personal that it's hard to grade it without feeling like I missed the point entirely.
To do a quick summary, the book starts off with the writer as a young man. He's driving, hits a girl who swerves in front of his car on her bike, and the girl dies. To make matters more complicated, the girl is a student at his high school.
What sets this book apart, to me, is that the author is so honest about everything. He's honest about some of the posturing he did right after the event because he was 17 and didn't really know how one would handle this sort of thing. He's honest about how he sabotaged some of his own relationships in life. He's really very honest about everything, and that's what makes the work book. You can tell he was ready to accept the things he had done and how he had handled it.
Things get a little strange when you start asking yourself why you're reading it. The thing is so personal it feels a little like something that you'd only hear from a close friend, and only after he just couldn't stay quiet about it anymore.
I'd like to think I didn't read it as a gawker, a rubbernecker on the roadside of the guy's life. I honestly don't think of myself as that kind of person.
I'd also like to think that I don't really get any pleasure or relief when reading about the misfortunes of others. It doesn't do a lot for me to watch someone else go through something bad and think, "At least I don't have it that bad."
Honestly, I think that I read it because it's almost like an It's a Wonderful Life kind of thing. We've all been there. Not as far down the road as the author went, but we've been on some kind of precipice. Mostly it comes and goes. You almost hit someone in a crosswalk, or maybe you take a fall and get up shocked that you can still stand under your own power, but we've all been to those places that make you say, "Holy shit. Someone could have died."
It's a good thing to find out what happens, in a way. In a very realistic way. It mostly confirms your worst fears, but like anything that reinforces fear, it's good to know that you're not alone in doing something that you regret or thinking about one life event changing everything afterwards, even if it wasn't your fault or if you don't really want things to be that way. Whether that life event be something this big or something much smaller, it's probably a really good message, especially for young men, to let people know that you might have feelings that you don't understand, don't know how to deal with, and really never go away.
The author himself, in the book, talks about how important the therapeutic act of writing something like this can be. There are proven effects, and a lot of it has to do with subject being able to hold the event in their hands. To have a stack of paper and say, Here it is. Here's that thing that kind of ruined my life. At least you feel some kind of power over it. That you can put it in a container, put some kind of a wall around it at least.
That's why it's so hard to rate this book. It seems like the author was successful on that count. He started the process of containing it, of putting it in a package that might lead to helping him understand everything better.
And it was a good read. He's a talented writer. I just feel strongly that there's no way to read this book without asking yourself why you're reading it and whether you should read it or not.
But how do you rate it? As a book? Or whether it accomplished what I would argue it's main purpose to be, organizing what could be a life-ruining event?
I guess maybe it's like a certain kind of pen. Let's say a Sharpie. I wouldn't want to write with one all the time. And there are a lot of applications where one COULD use it but I wouldn't advise it. However, when you come across a situation where you need a Sharpie, nothing works better.
This book is like that. If you need it, if you're in the right place for the book, it'll be great in it's own very tragic way. If you're not, you'll probably be disappointed and find it to be a completely inappropriate tool.
It's kind of like this: My brother taught some English classes at some colleges, and he made a rule that in the beginning classes he didn't want anyone to write essays about two things: Marijuana legalization and personal rape stories. The first because he'd just read too many that covered the same ground. The second sounds a little cold-hearted, but I can get behind his reasoning. He said that it was impossible to grade them. Imagine someone pouring her heart out regarding a terrible personal violation, but looking at it honestly and finding that it was rife with grammatical errors and misspellings. Grading the story of someone's rape just seemed methodical and bizarre, and it made it very difficult for him to ever assign a bad grade, which in some cases may have been an honest grade.
That's kind of how I feel about this book. It's a good book, but it's so deeply personal that it's hard to grade it without feeling like I missed the point entirely.
To do a quick summary, the book starts off with the writer as a young man. He's driving, hits a girl who swerves in front of his car on her bike, and the girl dies. To make matters more complicated, the girl is a student at his high school.
What sets this book apart, to me, is that the author is so honest about everything. He's honest about some of the posturing he did right after the event because he was 17 and didn't really know how one would handle this sort of thing. He's honest about how he sabotaged some of his own relationships in life. He's really very honest about everything, and that's what makes the work book. You can tell he was ready to accept the things he had done and how he had handled it.
Things get a little strange when you start asking yourself why you're reading it. The thing is so personal it feels a little like something that you'd only hear from a close friend, and only after he just couldn't stay quiet about it anymore.
I'd like to think I didn't read it as a gawker, a rubbernecker on the roadside of the guy's life. I honestly don't think of myself as that kind of person.
I'd also like to think that I don't really get any pleasure or relief when reading about the misfortunes of others. It doesn't do a lot for me to watch someone else go through something bad and think, "At least I don't have it that bad."
Honestly, I think that I read it because it's almost like an It's a Wonderful Life kind of thing. We've all been there. Not as far down the road as the author went, but we've been on some kind of precipice. Mostly it comes and goes. You almost hit someone in a crosswalk, or maybe you take a fall and get up shocked that you can still stand under your own power, but we've all been to those places that make you say, "Holy shit. Someone could have died."
It's a good thing to find out what happens, in a way. In a very realistic way. It mostly confirms your worst fears, but like anything that reinforces fear, it's good to know that you're not alone in doing something that you regret or thinking about one life event changing everything afterwards, even if it wasn't your fault or if you don't really want things to be that way. Whether that life event be something this big or something much smaller, it's probably a really good message, especially for young men, to let people know that you might have feelings that you don't understand, don't know how to deal with, and really never go away.
The author himself, in the book, talks about how important the therapeutic act of writing something like this can be. There are proven effects, and a lot of it has to do with subject being able to hold the event in their hands. To have a stack of paper and say, Here it is. Here's that thing that kind of ruined my life. At least you feel some kind of power over it. That you can put it in a container, put some kind of a wall around it at least.
That's why it's so hard to rate this book. It seems like the author was successful on that count. He started the process of containing it, of putting it in a package that might lead to helping him understand everything better.
And it was a good read. He's a talented writer. I just feel strongly that there's no way to read this book without asking yourself why you're reading it and whether you should read it or not.
But how do you rate it? As a book? Or whether it accomplished what I would argue it's main purpose to be, organizing what could be a life-ruining event?
I guess maybe it's like a certain kind of pen. Let's say a Sharpie. I wouldn't want to write with one all the time. And there are a lot of applications where one COULD use it but I wouldn't advise it. However, when you come across a situation where you need a Sharpie, nothing works better.
This book is like that. If you need it, if you're in the right place for the book, it'll be great in it's own very tragic way. If you're not, you'll probably be disappointed and find it to be a completely inappropriate tool.