Probing ... At pains to remind us that memoirs can easily lapse into mythology ... Ours is evidently an age of reappraisals, but this latest reappraisal itself invites reappraisal, for it is eager to undermine its own authority ... Ciment asks whether her marriage was all 'fruit from the poisonous tree.' It is a daring question, and she is unsentimental and unflinching enough to answer it convincingly, which is to say, complexly. She shrinks from nothing in her accounting.
Her remarkable new book—at once forthright, thoughtful, and moving— broaches many questions ... Provide a pointed reminder that all writing is selective, and memoirs are certainly no exception ... This is a book poised to fuel plenty of discussion.
Enthralling ... Every categorical declaration and moral certainty eventually winds up at war with the story of some real individual ... A memoir acknowledging that her marriage began with a serious transgression and weighing this against everything else it gave her.
Ciment scatters questions like confetti, letting them lie where they land ... Consent does not complete or cancel out Half a Life; in tracing the evidence of pentimento, it leaves its own traces that tamper and reveal. No one story supplants another, no brushstroke blots out the past.
In this sharply candid anatomy of a relationship and spellcasting remembrance, Ciment reflects on the dubious start to their union and how their roles switched over time. By turns stinging, hilarious, and poignant, this is rare and luminous testimony to creativity, commitment, and love over all.
