Half

April 20, 2020
In Harrigan’s unsettling debut novel (after the memoir Playing with Dynamite) identical twins contend with a complicated, abusive father. Artis and Paula, named for the Greek gods Artemis and Apollo, spend much of their childhood believing their father was something of a god or monster himself. Throughout their childhood and adolescence in Michigan, the girls respond to their father’s intense personality—including his physical and emotional abuse (“The two of you couldn’t add up to a boy”)—with a blend of fear and awe. Harrigan makes the personalities of Artis and Paula—who narrate the majority of the novel in first-person plural—deliberately indiscernible for much of the narrative, even after they leave for college in Ann Arbor, where they start dating boys; befriend a nonbinary classmate, with whom they discuss their plural identity; and fret over their mother, who still lives with their father. When the pair return home at age 30 for their father’s funeral, they discover a secret that will fundamentally alter their relationship, which Harrigan signals brilliantly by shifting the narration to alternating I’s. Harrigan’s bold stylistic choices and memorable voice lend the novel a sense of mystery and magic, well suited to its themes of childhood fears and adult disillusionment. Riveting and inventive, this is a cut above the average coming-of-age tale.

Starred review from June 1, 2020
Twin girls Paula and Artis seem to speak as one, feel as one, think as one. Raised by a powerfully abusive father and a mother who bends to his whims, the twins share a psychic connection so deep that they sense one another's pain. As the girls grow older, they begin to understand their separate talents and their places in the world?and that they won't always have to cower from their father. College brings freedom, new friends, and a new understanding of themselves, but family ties are strong. When their father passes away, Paula and Artis return home for the first time in years, but everything has changed. Now parents themselves, they wonder if their shared identity was ever meant to last. In her first novel, Harrigan cleverly narrates the early portions of Half in the twins' single voice, never letting readers know which twin is speaking until much later. Fans of Jeffrey Eugenides, Andre Dubus III, and Jane Smiley will adore Harrigan's suspenseful, lyrical, and consuming exploration of two difficult lives, intertwined. The adjective "haunting" can be overused to describe dynamic and poignant literary fiction, but it couldn't be more fitting here. Raw and powerful, Half will stay with you.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)