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Aug 19, 2008

Jafar rated it:

Quite unremarkable. I haven’t read anything else by Naipaul, and I probably won’t. I know I shouldn’t generalize from reading one book, but I do anyway. Methinks Naipaul is another mediocre Nobel laureate. (Jelinek and Mahfouz are the other examples that come immediately to my mind.) The protagonist is insufferably unlikable, boring, and passive. (At least Jelinek has a sick imagination and manages to make you hate her monstrous characters.) As for the writing – honestly, I think you’ll find bet More...

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Jul 26, 2007

Martin rated it:

It does what it does well and not much else. Not a great way to explain it but if you read it you will understand. We follow the exceptionally uneventful life of Willie as he tries to discover himself and find a path to walk down. I found him to be spineless and became quite bored watching him float through life being led by his lust most of the time like so many male characters in so many other(better written) books. But then, the language reflects his life, nothing much exciting going on. More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 15, 2009

Zoth rated it:

Parts of Half a Life are excellent. Willie's father's story is a good beginning and many scenes from Willie's student life in England and his half-life in Africa are also very nicely done. Parts of the novel, however, also seem too hurried.
Recommendation: One of the finest living writers in the English language, V. S. Naipaul gives many tales that we do not expect. I would like you to read this book so that you can also experience the life that the protagonist, Willie Chandran, has.
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Nov 26, 2011

Robert rated it:

Half a Life, published a decade ago, is another one of Naipaul's spare, brooding tales that focuses on the lack of identity--cultural identity, really--that characterizes modern life. The novel begins with a kind of joke. Willie Chandran was so named for W. Somerset Maughm who once met Willie's confused father, a silent holy man in India. This brought Willie no luck, however. Maughm wrote about the father, but he never expressed interest in helping Willie, not even when Willie showed up in Lon More...

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Sep 07, 2011

Nathan rated it:

It is awfully frustrating to reach the end of a well-written and engaging tale, only to discover that it is in fact the back story to another book. How much more frustrating it must have been to read this lovely book in 2001, before the sequel was written. You see, the story ends unresolved: the protagonist has learned so much about the world and his place in it, all of what we thought has been duly shaken ... but suddenly the screen goes dark and one is left positively clamouring for more! F More...

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Jun 15, 2009

LindyLouMac rated it:

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/7244...

A title recommended and passed on to me by my daughter recently. I read it in one afternoon session sitting in the shade in the garden.
As a little boy Willie Chandran wanted to know why his middle name was Somerset. His father explains that it was after the famous British writer Somerset Maugham. Willie of course wants to know why. This is the story that his father gradually tells him, of a son whom possibly should never have been bor More...

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Jun 13, 2009

Allison rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

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Jun 20, 2011

David rated it:

I read this novel as the search for and acceptance of the essence of one's true identity. This is a quest upon which Naipaul himself, no doubt, embarked, after his birth in Trinidad, education in England at Oxford, and life in Africa. The challenge of his protagonist is, having been born a "backwards", to understand and accept his real essence as a human being. He tends to approach this existential task by entangling himself in the lives of other people only to find that their lives br More...

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May 26, 2011

David rated it:

This was an odd book. I read "The Bend in the River" a good 15 years ago and read a few of Naipul's books since this one. I enjoyed the "Bend in the River" but had mixed feelings about "Half a Life."

It begins with the father of Willie, the main character, who was the inspirational figure for the hero of Somerset Maughan's "The Razor's Edge." His father's "claim to fame" doesn't really help and when his child is born, the father and s More...

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Oct 29, 2011

Prasad rated it:

In all an ok kind of book.

The author writes about life of an Indian born boy, who went to Britain before Indian independence and then to different countries.
Without any target in mind, without gaining any experience at different stages of his life.
Making and breaking friendships all over and and the end the book ends a little abruptly. What I mean by abruptness is I couldn't make out what the author exactly wanted to say.

The Independent on Sunday has quoted " More...

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May 15, 2007

beth rated it:

naipaul is BRUTUAL! many people are critical of his unsympathetic and even accusatory attitude towards citizens of undeveloped countries... but he's got something valid to say and it's worth hearing. this semi-autobiographical work explains how one can be both vulnerable and responsible. in other words, power is not only to be claimed by the wealthy. it's up for grabs.

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Oct 31, 2009

Susan rated it:

I made myself plow through the book because it won the Nobel for literature, but I did not really enjoy it. It is about a man who lives "Half a Life" because he is never an authentic member of whatever society he inhabits. He is Indian, but he is an anomaly in India because his parents come from vastly different castes. In England, he is foreign and finds the culture baffling and finds himself unable to swim into the mainstream. (Why he didn't connect with other Indians in London i More...

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Jan 13, 2011

Becky rated it:

It's nearly impossible to really write a review of Naipaul's Half a Life without including a gut reaction. The multi-layered threading of ideas presented in the novel are mind-numbing, to say the least. Every possible view and corner of race, social class, empire, colonization, education, and sexual politics are explored through the main character's life. Just as you get the sense that you are nailing down a "point" being made, the narrative snakes its way in a different direction. More...

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Jan 21, 2009

Shabnam rated it:

V.S. Naipaul is a literary craftsman which his "Half a Life” won him the Nobel Prize in literature in this tale of a man snagged in cultural crosscurrents "Half a Life" is really two half novels . Naipaul is showing us persons with mixed cultures who are confused ,and trying to remake themselves and their past. He shows Willie’s lack of knowledge and sexual impulses frankly Willie says “ we are not all born with sexual skill, and there are no schools where we can be trained “Naipa More...

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Apr 09, 2010

Patricia rated it:

A book of quiet desperation, of ordinary men and women who have mixed cultural back grounds. Willy, the main character, works to escape the implications of his family upbringing in India as he discovers the Western values in England and Africa. His reaction is passive, yet involves change of himself. He does not achieve happiness. He does many things that would have been forbidden in his old culture, and sometimes excites the reader into believing he has grown, yet, he continues to judge him More...

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Jun 26, 2010

Sandy rated it:

I know VS Naipaul is one of the most highly regarded authors of the 20th century and that he won a Nobel Prize for literature. I had read his book, "A Bend in the River", also about Colonial Africa and found it extraordinary and memorable.... This one even more so.

This is a deeply affecting, fictional (apparently semi-autobiographical) narrative about an Indian man who cannot find himself. Having been raised in the conflicted world of a hindu father who intentionally wed a More...

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Dec 20, 2010

Nelson rated it:

My Melancholy Whores, set in 50s London and 60s East Africa. A sexual history as much as it is anything else, maybe more that than anything. The first half is a good deal more wry and ironic than the second half. Once the protagonist gets to colonial Africa, the tone darkens and what grim humor there was seems to dry up. The style is pretty interesting. Clipped, short subject-verb-object sentences in the London (and India) section, giving way to more expansive, clause-laden periods in the l More...

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Apr 23, 2011

Lorraine rated it:

urgh. This is so ostensibly 'poco'. I didn't 'feel it'. The part on africa was the most well done, but by then I had lost interest in the book. It just seemed dull, lifeless. Not too well written, though not *badly* written. I seemed to see the points very easily; I think it is lauded as being more nuanced than it actually is. Coetzee praised it; praised Naipaul, but I think it is all (some complicated form) of guilt. I see that the prose is meant to chill, but it does not chill me; I am indiffe More...

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Oct 25, 2009

skye rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

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Apr 28, 2011

Mara rated it:

“La metà di una vita" e’ un romanzo sociale di storia contemporanea, che descrive una ricerca di identità, narrata attraverso il viaggio del protagonista Willie Chandran, dall'India a Londra ad una colonia orientale dell'Africa. Sfondo storico e sociale sono colonialismo e conflitti razziali.
All’ inizio del romanzo il protagonista e’ quasi senza spessore, una specie di nebulosa, senza forza e con uno poco spessore psicologico, poi lentamente, con il procedere del suo viaggio e More...

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Mar 06, 2010

Scott rated it:

With each book I read that has a setting in India, I find myself fascinated with it's complicated social structures. I'm not sure if there's one book that can adequately put it all together in the reader's mind. Having read Naipaul's: "India-Land of a Million Mutinies Now" back in the 90's, I long ago developed a sense of all it's complicities. This is were I find a novel such as "Half a Life" very helpful. In Naipaul's character Willie Chandran we experience the impact a More...

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Apr 08, 2009

Nicholas added it

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1302708.html[return][return]Having enjoyed A House for Mr Biswas, I tried this as a follow-up, but did not enjoy it as much. Naipaul's protagonist is Indian, and gets a scholarship to study in London, where he starts to make a career as a journalist and writer; and then he abruptly goes to Africa with his current lover. The best thing about the book is the vivid sense of place of the three settings - the immediate post-independence period in India, the London litera More...

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Oct 23, 2008

Sai rated it:

This didn't make much of an impression on me –I expected more. The most compelling bit is the story of Willie’s father, not so much of Willie himself. Willie’s father is a man who goes along with the flow of things because he is remarkably mediocre, below average perhaps. Trying to break the tedium and prove himself worthy, he makes a ‘noble’ decision to marry outside his caste, a decision which turns out to be all talk and no substance because he isn’t able to, nor does he genuinely try to, rid More...

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Apr 10, 2008

Rebecca rated it:

This is an unusual novel. There's no actual plot; instead, the story follows a man through his restless, aimless life. I know this doesn't sound very compelling, but it is--his desire for more--to figure out where he belongs and what he should be doing to create meaning in his life--is crushing.

SPOILER!
The structure cleverly echoes this vacancy. After following the character closely for 120 pages, you suddenly encounter this terrifying line: "He stayed for eighteen ye More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 31, 2007

Erinina Marie rated it:

Half A Life by V.S. Naipaul

This book was on a class list for a mixed genres writing course (memoir and fiction blended), but we never got to the book. I had picked it up once before and tossed it aside, but this time the story engaged me. I continuously pondered the meaning of half of a life as the author carried me from caste centered India to London to Portugese colonial Africa exploring and analysing the ways in which each society contained and labeled it’s classes. At the same ti More...

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Feb 17, 2011

Tanya rated it:

I was very disappointed with this book - for such a short book that would normally take me less than a day to read, it has taken me almost a month to finish. I found myself so bored and irrated with the characters and the plot that I kept putting the book down with annoyance.

Having endured his father's story at the start of the book I hoped that his son's story and the rest of the book would get more interesting and enjoyable... unfortunately it was even more painfully boring poin More...

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Jul 08, 2009

Kazza rated it:

Interesting beginning, not-so-interesting body, and just when it's picking up, the book ended. It just feels like the book was just drifting with no purpose which I suppose gels with the character of the protagonist. He lacks the courage & the vision for a "purposefull life" and just drifted along, piggy-backing on others. A lot of 'sexual' exploration which I don't particularly know how it fits in the book.

All in all, I would not recommend it as a book to read as I didn' More...

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Jun 15, 2008

Kathy rated it:

An ok book; sometimes insightful. Slow paced. I think the writing itself was artful, but just couldn't really get into the narrative itself. This reproachable guy fathers another reproachable guy who doesn't seem to have any clue who he is or what he wants to do. The son floats around in life. His sexual development is the only area this character experiences any growth, and it is his sexual experiences that lead him to feel sympathy for his father (whom he loathes), and to realize that he l More...

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Apr 29, 2008

Cory rated it:

My freind gave me this book - I don't think I would have read it unless he gave it to me. I'm glad I did - Once again it is about a world completely alien to me - someone raised in India attending school in England - marrying someone from South Africa and moving there with his wife to yet another alien (to him and to me) culture. He is considered one of the greatest writers of our century and won a Nobel prize for literature in 2001 --and everything I read about him makes him look like he a big More...

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Jun 08, 2009

Sonya rated it:

This is basically a coming of age book. It is about a boy who is raised by parents of two different castes in India, and who are not well matched. The boy suffers a confused sense of identity in India, but learns that he can reinvent himself outside of India. In school in England, he fabricates stories of himself which are partly truth and partly fantasy. The writing becomes a tool for him to explore, disguise, and reinvent himself abroad.

I wonder to what degree, if any, this is More...

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