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Half a Life

3.53 of 5 stars 3.53 · rating details · 2,227 ratings · 561 reviews

"Half my life ago, I killed a girl."

So begins Darin Strauss’ Half a Life, the true story of how one outing in his father’s Oldsmobile resulted in the death of a classmate and the beginning of a different, darker life for the author. We follow Strauss as he explores his startling past—collision, funeral, the queasy drama of a high-stakes court case—and what starts as a pers...more

Hardcover, 204 pages

Published September 15th 2010 by McSweeney's Publishing (first published September 13th 2010)

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Sep 18, 2011 thewanderingjew rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

When I turned to the last page of this profound little book, I simply sat quietly and thought about how awful it must be to carry guilt with you, like a shadow, for most of your life, for something you probably had little or no control over and are completely without blame.
This poignant, honest appraisal of a tragic accident, that took place "half a life" away, grips you in its claws. You are compelled to empathize with the driver of the car and the bicyclist that was killed. The simplicity of...more

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Sep 04, 2012 Pamela rated it 5 of 5 stars

Very, very interesting account of one of those events of which you think: "What would it be like if this ever happened to me?" At the age of 18 (he's now 40), while driving to the beach, Darin Straus hit and killed a girl riding on a bicycle; she'd inexplicably turned into his lane. Although he was absolved of any blame, the accident has shadowed his life since (aided by a cruel million-dollar lawsuit brought by the girl's parents). I have never read an account like the one of Straus returning t...more

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Aug 08, 2011 Julie Hilden rated it 5 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. WOW -- STRONGLY RECOMMEND!!!! I was lucky enough to get my hands on an advance copy of this memoir by Darin Strauss, and it is incredible. Almost TOO incredible -- while I was reading the first chapter, which describes the author's car accident, my heart started beating really quickly! I've never had that reaction to a book before -- and it seemed to give me a tiny glimpse into how overwhelming the whole experience that the book describes must have been for the author. Fortunately, I calmed down...more WOW -- STRONGLY RECOMMEND!!!! I was lucky enough to get my hands on an advance copy of this memoir by Darin Strauss, and it is incredible. Almost TOO incredible -- while I was reading the first chapter, which describes the author's car accident, my heart started beating really quickly! I've never had that reaction to a book before -- and it seemed to give me a tiny glimpse into how overwhelming the whole experience that the book describes must have been for the author. Fortunately, I calmed down and finished the book in one sitting and it was riveting.

The book starts with the accident: The author, in high school, is driving his father's car when a classmate swerves in front of him on her bike. He knows there is nothing he could have done and the police confirm that. But it is hard for people in his hometown to cope with the idea that this was just a senseless, meaningless accident -- no one likes to think that our lives are out of our control; we are more comfortable with assigning fault or at least ascribing some kind of significance.

So the girl's mother tells Darin that he is living for two now, and that he has to do everything twice as well now. She seems to mean well -- to offer a way for Darin to be able to somehow make up for, or at least respond to, the accident -- but instead she places a heavy burden on him. Maybe she tried to forgive him and couldn't -- for later (no spoiler here, since the book cover discloses it) she and her husband sue Darin. But perhaps the lawsuit doesn't take the heaviest toll on him -- maybe the heaviest toll is taken by Darin's inability to get close to anyone he meets after the accident: "My accident was the deepest part of my life and the second deepest was hiding it.... By now the camouflage had become my skin." Confessing doesn't help either: "Even the truth had a lie's sourness."

The book is beautifully-written, impossible to put down, and significant for all of us hoping to figure out the meaning of our lives and to decide what -- and whom -- we are responsible for.(less)

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Oct 28, 2010 Ben Loory rated it 2 of 5 stars

i feel bad for not liking this more than i do; darin strauss seems like a good guy and life definitely dealt him a shitty hand in the accident this memoir is about. but after the first 50 pages or so, it just felt like all the emotion leaked away, and then never really came back. leaving a hundred or so pages of what i would characterize as gentle rumination. which is fine-- it's certainly not a bad book-- but it's not the mind-blowing or heart-wrenching memoir one might expect from such an even...more

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Mar 17, 2011 Ro rated it 4 of 5 stars

"Things don't go away. They become you. There is no end, as T.S. Eliot somewhere says, but addition: the trailing consequence of further days and hours. No freedom from the past, or from the future.

But we keep making our way, as we have to. We're all pretty much able to deal even with the worst that life can fire at us, if we simply admit that it is very difficult. I think that's the whole of the answer. We make our way, and effort and time give us cushion and dignity. And as we age, we're ridin...more

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Mar 06, 2013 Melinda rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: memoir

I really didn't like this book. I know, I know. It was supposed to be poignant and emotionally searing and blah blah blah, but the author came across to me as a self indulgent navel gazer. Some of the writing itself was atrocious: "I dropped a clumsy hand to the table and splashed my salad." Had to read that one twice. "My internal climate was a hurricane alley. Emotions blew through, downing power lines, hefting cars onto roofs, destroying the finish. Low trees, dead wood thrown across traffic....more

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Sep 18, 2012 Norah rated it 5 of 5 stars

This memoir blew my mind it was so good. I talked to a friend who said he'd cried quite a bit while reading this book, but urged me to read it nonetheless. The subject matter is intense. Darin Strauss was involved in a terrible auto accident when he was a teenager: he was driving and a teenager girl, who he didn't know but was close to his age, swerved in front of his car. She died on impact. Her death was ruled an accident, and the investigation showed that Darin Strauss was not at fault. Given...more This memoir blew my mind it was so good. I talked to a friend who said he'd cried quite a bit while reading this book, but urged me to read it nonetheless. The subject matter is intense. Darin Strauss was involved in a terrible auto accident when he was a teenager: he was driving and a teenager girl, who he didn't know but was close to his age, swerved in front of his car. She died on impact. Her death was ruled an accident, and the investigation showed that Darin Strauss was not at fault. Given the precise circumstances (which are outlined in detail in this memoir) there was likely nothing he could have done to prevent the collision. Nevertheless, Strauss begins the memoir with the line "Half a life ago, I killed a girl." This is one of the best opening lines I've read, and it sets the tone for the book.

In "Half a Life," Strauss has written an unflinching and unselfish account of this experience and the way it came to define his life for many years. He doesn't shy away from the gritty aspects of the story or from hardcore emotions. He goes right up to the edge of intense emotions and sentimentality without falling over that edge, without letting his story get melodramatic or overly sentimental. I didn't cry, but it's not because I wasn't moved emotionally. I found myself fascinated, enraptured. The book isn't entirely about this accident -- it's a coming of age story about a person whose state of mind while he's transitioning from boy to man is focused on his reactions to this terrible event, and the way he tries to understand the accident. He's on a quest to make sense of it, and himself, and a world in which things like this happen. I stayed up all night finishing the last half of the book. When I reached the end I considered starting again at the beginning. This is because it's a relatively short book and the style is so lyrical, the structure so circular in nature that when I read the last page, I realized that when I turned back to the first page it flowed quite naturally -- as if the first page could come directly after the last. But alas -- it was 6 am and I needed to sleep. I'm sure that I will re-read it soon.

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Sep 09, 2012 Laura rated it 4 of 5 stars

What a painful book to read! It's going to be a required book for some of our HS seniors and I like to know the books that the kids read. I am curious as to how the students will find this book, as I think you need to have had more life experience than a 17 year-old has to "get" it. But I respect the teachers involved and look forward to the experience.

At age 18, the author killed a girl - accidentally, it was determined. Still, the ramifications of that act inform every moment of the author's f...more

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Sep 04, 2012 Lily Snape rated it 1 of 5 stars

Absolutely despised it. Perhaps it's the fact that I'm not as intelligently enriched as the rest of the people that loved it. Perhaps I didn't fully grasp it. But I know what the book was meant to be. Touching, gripping, life-changing, and full of emotion. Perhaps it was such, but there are aspects of it that overshadowed these things for me. For instance, it was forcefully described. I reminded me a bit of SMeyers description. (But of course not as bad. Smeyers is the worst you'll find.) The ty...more

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Aug 06, 2012 Rachel added it

"Half my life ago, I killed a girl." This is the opening line to this memoir. It took me a few years to decide to read this book. I (like the author himself) was wary of a novel published about the death of another person. Now that I have read it, rating it doesn't feel right because this is a deeply personal story, so I'm not going to rate it. Basically, this is the story of a man who at 18 years old struck and killed a 16 year old girl who swerved in front of his car while on a bicycle, and wh...more

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Aug 01, 2012 Cailin Deery added it · review of another edition

I first heard this story years ago, on an episode of This American Life when Darin came in to read his memoir notes. Half a Life is Darin's account of and struggle to come to terms with an accident that happened when he was just 18: a girl from his highschool, just one year his junior, suddenly crossed in front of his car on her bicycle when the car was going 40 mph. She was killed by the impact. For another 18 years, though he had a degree in Creative Writing and had published 3 novels, he didn...more

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Jun 12, 2012 Monica Casper rated it 3 of 5 stars

There is much to admire in this book. The writing is lovely and crisp (although not uniformly). Strauss emerges as an interesting person, not just as an author somebody's read once or heard about. He doesn't exactly bleed on the page, but he does share some hard truths. And the story itself is wholly disturbing; who hasn't worried about precisely this scenario while driving, even slowly, along bicyclists?

As a teacher of trauma studies, I would certainly consider using this book in my course. Str...more

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Apr 05, 2012 Nancy Whitlatch rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book caught my interest because it was about a high school senior who was driving his dad's car when a classmate swerved in front of him resulting in her death. My impression from that was, high school kids crash and he's going to describe how he picked up the pieces having survived the crash. I thought, oh sounds interesting. Then when I discovered the girl was a classmate and she was on a bicycle it intrigued me even more being an avid cyclist myself. There is no question David Strauss is...more

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Feb 27, 2012 Eric Klee rated it 3 of 5 stars

The title of Darin Strauss' memoir has two meanings. One: That half his life ago (i.e., meaning that when he was 18, being in his late 30s when he wrote the book), he accidentally killed a girl his age while driving. This is the meaning the author intended. However, there is also my second interpretation of the title: the girl Celine that died only lived "half a life;" she only had a childhood, never an adulthood.

Although Strauss states that he sat down to write this memoir in his late 30s, it...more The title of Darin Strauss' memoir has two meanings. One: That half his life ago (i.e., meaning that when he was 18, being in his late 30s when he wrote the book), he accidentally killed a girl his age while driving. This is the meaning the author intended. However, there is also my second interpretation of the title: the girl Celine that died only lived "half a life;" she only had a childhood, never an adulthood.

Although Strauss states that he sat down to write this memoir in his late 30s, it reads like a series of what could have been (and, for all we know, may have been) his own journal entries over the years. Because, really, what writer doesn't maintain a journal of his/her life experiences?

I didn't really connect with the book; it felt like it was just more of a catharsis for the author. It was something that he had to do to move on, but as a reader, I didn't feel "drawn in" to his grief or the situation.

Strauss continuously mentions that he had difficulty moving on from the accidental killing of one of his schoolmates, but he also purposely leaves out huge chunks of his life that he was, most likely, enjoying. He lived in places like Boston, London, L.A., and New York City. How could you not put aside your past and enjoy those fantastic cities? I don't mean to discount the tragedy, but I wanted to connect more with the author and the situation. He's a great writer when writing about other people, but his own feelings weren't properly conveyed on the pages to let us join in on his sorrow and regret. I felt like he was just repeating himself from chapter to chapter rather than giving the reader something new.

Many times, I felt that Strauss was writing just to convince everyone that he wasn't guilty. Perhaps even to convince the parents of the girl of his innocence because they did bring him to court in a legal battle that went on for years (before his fame as an author). This does speak volumes about our litigious society, though. People are always wanting to point blame and collect from their misfortune rather than accepting that sometimes things "just happen" or that it's their own fault. Strauss defends his every thought or action on the pages, most times needlessly, because it's pretty obvious that he wasn't guilty of a crime. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Like I said, I enjoyed the author's writing style, but I didn't really connect with the words on the page. I didn't walk away with the emotions I was expecting. (less)

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Feb 10, 2012 Rosemarie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewed

My reaction to this book was so visceral that I hardly know how to review it.

On a beautiful weekend morning in May, shortly before his graduation from high school, Darin Strauss accidentally struck and killed a schoolmate whose bike inexplicably veered in front of his car.

As with a massive earthquake, the axis of his world has shifted forever in ways he can hardly comprehend. Attempts to fully grasp the enormity of the event fail, as his bruised mind keeps slipping around and away from the eve...more

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Jan 22, 2012 Johnpatrick rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: mcsweeney-s

Half a Life could easily have followed the route of films like Precious and become hard to watch due to its highly confessional nature, but you never exactly feel like you want to look away from Darin Strauss' account of his struggle with grief. The line-writing itself is beautiful and compelling, and the pacing is extraordinary. There is so much blank space in this book, single page chapters with blank page opposite. While the book clocks in at a scant 204 pages, it would probably be about 150...more

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Nov 12, 2011 Erin Rogers rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoir

I found this book to be incredibly moving and poignant. Without question, this is my favorite memoir I have ever read. Half a Life begins with the heart-wrenchingly tragic confession of the author that exactly half his life ago, when he was 18 years-old, he was driving a car full of his friends on their way to play mini-golf when he hit and killed a 16 year-old girl classmate. It would seem positively impossible to go on living a day-to-day “normal” life after such an event, and yet, that is pre...more

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Sep 07, 2011 Diane rated it 4 of 5 stars

Darin Strauss was a high school senior just about to graduate when he hit and killed a fellow student with his car. The aftermath of that accident and how he lived with it are recounted in his evocative memoir Half a Life.

As the mother of two young men, this book was really a punch to the gut. Strauss was cleared of all legal responsibility for the accident in which a young girl turned her bicycle into the path of his car, but the moral responsibility lingered on for many years to come.

One of th...more Darin Strauss was a high school senior just about to graduate when he hit and killed a fellow student with his car. The aftermath of that accident and how he lived with it are recounted in his evocative memoir Half a Life.

As the mother of two young men, this book was really a punch to the gut. Strauss was cleared of all legal responsibility for the accident in which a young girl turned her bicycle into the path of his car, but the moral responsibility lingered on for many years to come.

One of the hardest chapters to read was the one where Strauss and his father attended the funeral for Celine, the girl who was killed. His mother did not attend, and Strauss was not sure why. It was a brave thing for him to do.

He spoke to Celine's parents, and they seemed kind to him. Celine's mother did say something that would linger with him for almost twenty years. She made him promise that "whatever you do in your life, you have to do it twice as well. Because you are living it for two people".

The accident changed his life in so many ways. He became "squishily obliging", hoping that by being overtly kind to everyone he met that when they found out what he had done, they would think that he was so "decent and kind", and that it was terrible that something so awful happened to such a nice guy.

Celine's parents sued Strauss, an event that dragged on for five long years. Strauss didn't really know Celine very well, so he tried to learn everything he could about her, including why she turned into his car.

He took her mother's plea to heart, and tried to live his life for two people. Every experience he had, he thought of Celine while it was happening. It was emotionally draining, and he developed a severe stomach ailment.

There are so many moving stories in the book: attending his high school reunion, telling his wife on their fifth date what happened, returning the scene of the accident so many years later. Strauss writes so beautifully and honestly about the pain this incident caused and how it affected every single thing that happened to him afterword, it is impossible not to be moved.

This book reminded me of Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking; it's about how death so deeply affects the lives of those left behind, whether you loved them or hardly knew them.

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Aug 28, 2011 christa rated it 4 of 5 stars

Anyone with a vivid imagination and a something ton vehicle who has ever cruised alongside a wobbly bicyclist has probably mentally played out this scene: Biker veers left into the path of the car, defies gravity by skirting up the hood, face pressed into the windshield, body tossed like a limp towel to the shoulder of the road, the thump of flesh bags dropped into gravel, the glint of a reflector and the crush of metal.

In the case of Darin Strauss, this is exactly what happened toward the end...more Anyone with a vivid imagination and a something ton vehicle who has ever cruised alongside a wobbly bicyclist has probably mentally played out this scene: Biker veers left into the path of the car, defies gravity by skirting up the hood, face pressed into the windshield, body tossed like a limp towel to the shoulder of the road, the thump of flesh bags dropped into gravel, the glint of a reflector and the crush of metal.

In the case of Darin Strauss, this is exactly what happened toward the end of his senior year of high school. His Oldsmobile load of friends en route to a mini golf course; the victim was the athletic younger school mate Celine Zilke.

“Half a life ago, I killed a girl,” Strauss writes in his memoir “Half a Life,” the story of 18 years of living with the proverbial blood on his fender, an accident that was ruled an accident by witnesses and authorities. Still, it happened during those years when a teenager already feels the harsh and judge-y gaze of peers -- all the more penetrating because it involves a dead girl.

“How do I keep the accident from being the main thing about me forever,” he wonders.

After graduation, Strauss tries to shed this distinction. He goes away to college and holds the story captive in his own head. He replays Zilke’s mother’s funeral-side curse to live for two as he works his way into adulthood. He thinks of the girl when he reaches for a can of soda and realizes she will never get to reach for another soda. Occasionally he gets to the point in relationships where he feels that he has to tell a girlfriend -- and these moments are met with mixed responses: awkward comforting gazes, phone calls that aren’t returned, a sharing of a personal tragic experience, anger. Finally, 18 years after it happened, married with two children, the writer who is known as a novelist shares his most-consuming story.

It’s honest in a way that had to be hard to write: A moment at the scene of the accident when some pretty girls wander over and ask what happens and he purposefully and self-consciously morphs himself into the portrait of a grieving man. The assertion that maybe young Celine was suicidal, holding fast to a journal entry she had penned the day of her death in which she reveals that she has finally realized that she is going to die. (Someday? Or within a few hours? Hard to decipher the emo intents of a high school girl with a journal). Sometimes he feels Celine with him; Sometimes he feels like he should feel Celine with him. And the numbness.

This story is, obviously, gripping. But Strauss doesn’t let that keep him from applying word-magic in the way he tells it.

“I’ve come to see our central nervous system as a kind of vintage switchboard, all thick foam wires and old-fashioned plugs. The circuitry isn’t properly equipped; after a surplus of emotional information the system overloads, the circuit breaks, the board runs dark. That’s what shock is.” (less)

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Jun 30, 2011 Laura rated it 4 of 5 stars

A Wholly Engaging Memoir

Half A Life by Darin Strauss

Half A Life is not your typical ‘near-death experience’ book or miracle ‘come back’ from major illness story.
It’s a memoir for real people who’ve experienced the unthinkable – a bottomless tragedy, the loss no fault of their own. For those readers, Strauss’s story is an honest, raw-knuckled street fight: before the accident vs. after.
It’s a battle that has no winners, only survivors.
As the author says, “Half my life ago, I killed a girl.”
The...more A Wholly Engaging Memoir

Half A Life by Darin Strauss

Half A Life is not your typical ‘near-death experience’ book or miracle ‘come back’ from major illness story.
It’s a memoir for real people who’ve experienced the unthinkable – a bottomless tragedy, the loss no fault of their own. For those readers, Strauss’s story is an honest, raw-knuckled street fight: before the accident vs. after.
It’s a battle that has no winners, only survivors.
As the author says, “Half my life ago, I killed a girl.”
The book begins with 18-year old Darin Strauss describes driving along a four-lane road with his high school friends on a spring day. The weather is gorgeous and sunny; there are bicyclists ahead on the right shoulder, traveling in the same direction. Strauss, in the far left lane, recalls a bicyclist wobbling from the shoulder onto the highway. Moments later, the same girl swerves into his car’s path.
Emergency vehicles and police officers swarm the scene. Strauss and his friends watch as the badly injured Celine Zilke, a 16-year old classmate, is taken to the hospital. The next morning, the Strauss family is notified that the bicyclist, Celine, is dead.
Shaken and haunted by memories of the accident he can’t erase, the last days of the author’s senior year are filled with crushing guilt and anxiety. Life doesn’t wait for him to bounce back. Strauss is tossed back into the fray, left to survive vicious gossip, a bizarre therapy visit, and a heart-wrenching school memorial for Celine.
Meanwhile, the police and eyewitnesses go on the record for Strauss in a newspaper article, making him “officially” not to blame for his classmate’s death. It’s a comfort to his family, but little relief for Strauss.
At the funeral, Celine’s mother tells Strauss she understands he is not at fault. She asks him live his life “…twice as well” because he has to live for Celine, too – then makes him promise to do so.
Already full of self-loathing, Strauss reels from the request.
He escapes to college, thinking it will serve as a safe, convenient “witness protection program,” but Strauss finds a change in environment does little to change the past. The death of Celine Zilke becomes a vortex, sucking Strauss into deep depression, poor choices, and self-destructive behavior.
He eventually meets and marries his wife, who helps him find the strength to face the tragedy: “It's not that I outran Celine, or that half of my life. It's the reverse. The accident taught me this. Things don't go away. They become you.”
Half A Life is not a memoir about self-pity. Strauss doesn’t glorify his innocence; he suffers, even when Celine’s parents lose a multi-million dollar lawsuit against him. Through everything, he honors Celine’s memory and her parents’ immeasurable grief.
Read more about the author and his works of fiction at www.darinstrauss.com.
Paperback: 224 pages
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks; Reprint edition (May 31, 2011)

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Jun 23, 2011 Readnponder rated it 4 of 5 stars

I felt like a rubber-necking motorist driving pass an accident, as I read this book. I have often wondered what a person experiences who inadvertantly contributed to the death of another. Darin was simply driving his car down the road (no alcohol, no hijinks) when a fellow high school classmate on a bicycle careened into the front of his vehicle. Darin was not at fault, yet that doesn't change the emotional turmoil, nor the years-long legal battle. Eventually, the lawsuit was dropped because the...more

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Jun 03, 2011 Leslie rated it 3 of 5 stars

The author was involved in a truly tragic accident as a high school senior, and the impact on his life has been significant. I do not want to diminish any of what he has endured in the intervening years, and I cannot comprehend what it would be like to live with so many unanswered questions and so many "what ifs". I heard the author talk about his experience on NPR more than a year ago, and was enthralled with his story. I expected the book to expand on that.

However, I was disappointed. The memo...more

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May 25, 2011 Riley rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

The first section (about the accident) is choppy, complex, and full of future-self-looking-back insights that make it hard to connect with what's happening in the story. I wish Strauss had been able to commit to the past, had allowed himself to show us what that time was like WITHOUT all the disclaimers and "please don't think badly of me" remarks. He wrote "My fear now is that all of this sounds over-aestheticized, and vague." Unfortunately that's exactly what happened.

HOWEVER. The following se...more

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May 24, 2011 Nancy rated it 4 of 5 stars

When Darin Strauss was 18 - half a life ago - a girl on a bike, Celine Zilke, inexplicably turned left, headed across two lanes of traffic, and struck his car. She was killed by the impact; his life was nearly destroyed by the aftermath of horror, guilt, and shame. HALF A LIFE is Strauss's meticulous, intensely detailed examination of his struggle to make sense of the tragic event that altered his life. It is a memoir of a sort that I have never encountered - I have to call it a memoir of guilt....more

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May 16, 2011 Laala Alghata rated it 5 of 5 stars

“A tragedy’s first act is crowded with supporting players: witnesses crimping their faces, policemen scribbling in pads and making radio calls, EMS guys unfolding equipment, tubes and wheels.” — Darin Strauss, Half a Life

Darin Strauss’ Half a Life is an incredible book. When he was a teenager, a girl he knew from school swerved into his lane on her bike as he was driving. He hit her, and she died.

“Everything between past and present hadn’t disappeared but grown incredibly slim, a wall between n...more “A tragedy’s first act is crowded with supporting players: witnesses crimping their faces, policemen scribbling in pads and making radio calls, EMS guys unfolding equipment, tubes and wheels.” — Darin Strauss, Half a Life

Darin Strauss’ Half a Life is an incredible book. When he was a teenager, a girl he knew from school swerved into his lane on her bike as he was driving. He hit her, and she died.

“Everything between past and present hadn’t disappeared but grown incredibly slim, a wall between now and before that seemed to occupy no space at all. I was the person I had been. This guy was who had been. Someone all of us used to know was long dead. And the person who’d killed her was making his way home, after pointedly not ordering a single alcoholic drink because he didn’t want anyone to see him and have DUI thoughts.”

This is the first time he’s written about it, although it has been a huge part of his life. He writes about how he goes onto university, how he feels Celine (the girl) with him, how he finds it hard to be in relationship because he knows that he’ll inevitably have to “confess” to what happened and he’s harsh on most everybody’s reactions.

“Even the truth has a lie’s sourness. This was the big problem of confessing, the problem of recognition. I had to do a mental squint just to see myself.”

Like a lot of memoirs, it’s amazing how resilient human life is, and how flawed; but mostly, it’s astounding how someone who went through completely different experiences, who never killed someone accidentally, could still sympathise and have that moment of oh! I’ve felt like that.

“Things don’t go away. They become you. There is no end, as T. S. Eliot somewhere says, but addition: the trailing consequence of further days and hours. No freedom from the past, or from the future.

But we keep making our way, as we have to. We’re all pretty much able to deal even with the worst that life can fire at us, if we simply admit that it is very difficult.”

This is one book I’d recommend wholeheartedly, the kind of book I’d buy copies of and give them to people to read (well, you know, if it was cheap). (less)

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Apr 25, 2011 Jill rated it 5 of 5 stars

In The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, an old Mariner kills an albatross – a bird that symbolizes the soul – and as a result, is forced to wander the earth and tell his story of torment before he becomes “a sadder and a wiser man.” In ways, this is an apt comparison to Darin Strauss, who, at age 18, inadvertently kills Celine Zilke, whose bicycle swerves into the path of his car.

This is a very personal tale about a tragedy that shaped the author’s entire life, and he tells it unflinchingly and with...more In The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, an old Mariner kills an albatross – a bird that symbolizes the soul – and as a result, is forced to wander the earth and tell his story of torment before he becomes “a sadder and a wiser man.” In ways, this is an apt comparison to Darin Strauss, who, at age 18, inadvertently kills Celine Zilke, whose bicycle swerves into the path of his car.

This is a very personal tale about a tragedy that shaped the author’s entire life, and he tells it unflinchingly and with great courage and perception. The author says, “Things don’t go away. They become you. There is no end, as T.S. Eliot somewhere says, but addition: the trailing consequence of further days and hours.”

The enormity and suddenness of the accident – and it is a random accident – initially causes Darin Strauss, the teenager, to shut down, to feel over-aestheticized. What do you do, after all, when you’ve become the unwilling instrument for another’s death? How do you incorporate it into your teenage life? You can’t die along with her…so maybe, just maybe, you go to a movie. You try to put one foot in front of the other and strive to feel something that you don’t. It only hits you much later.

And hit him it does. Darin Strauss must learn how to decipher the “forming pattern of accusations and consequences.” He must face Celine’s friends – who try hard not to hold him responsible – and even worse, her parents, who eventually turn on him and hit him with a multi-million-dollar court case, which never sees the light of day.

Darin goes to college – which he views as a witness-protection program, where he can form a new identity. He takes great pains to make sure that none of his new friends meet any of his old friends; what if someone were to find out? He goes through stomach surgery as the acids literally eat him up from the inside out. He cozies up to people, hoping that when they learn the story, they’ll think, “But he’s so decent and kind.” And he chooses to become a fiction writer, choosing themes (such as with his excellent Chang and Eng), in which one twin lives and the other dies. Truly, he is “twinned” with Celine.

This is not a “pity me” book in any way, shape or form. It’s a book about a man who, at a very young age, is cast in a role he had no intention of playing, and who eventually realizes that what he hates about himself most is “feeling lucky for being alive.” This is a nakedly honest and fearless book, and one gleans that the author is writing it because he must, not because he particularly wants to. It has given me even greater respect for a contemporary novelist I’ve always liked.

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Apr 17, 2011 Jeannie Turicik rated it 4 of 5 stars

When a life is lost in any kind of tragic accident, our thoughts turn to the victim and his/her family. This book goes beyond that and takes you into the heart and mind of the person who survived the accident-who was driving the car that caused the loss of life. Although he was not at fault, Darin Strauss's life changed forever on that fateful day, in that split second and this is a story of how he "didn't" cope with what happened for many years. Survivor guilt is what he lived with, what shaped...more

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Apr 16, 2011 Barbara rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: pass-along

Darin Strauss presents his new work “Half a Life” in an all-consuming, page turning reflection of the most significant event he ever experienced – the no fault death of a bicycling schoolmate from impact with a car he was driving. The cadence of his narrative, from the mind numbing, shocking and public immediacy of the event, to the distant jarring of unexpected reminders decades later, draws a realistic picture of the disability that comes when guilt and shame inhabit a trauma survivor. Outward...more

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Apr 12, 2011 Erica added it · review of another edition

It's really strange to read a memoir written by someone you know about something so personal. Darin Strauss was one of my college writing teachers. I took his class more than once and between Darin himself and some of the other people there that class shaped a lot of who I am as a writer. This book is about how he accidentally hit a classmate of his with his car and killed her when he was a teenager, and though he had definitely mentioned that in class once, it was in an offhand remark. But this...more

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Apr 10, 2011 Jennifer rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoir

Here is the first line of this memoir:

Half my life ago, I killed a girl.

The girl who died is Celine Zilke—a 16-year-old girl who was attending the same Long Island high school as Strauss (who was 18 at the time of the accident). He takes us through what he can remember of the accident, in which Strauss’s car hit Zilke as she was riding her bike and swerved into his lane. He memory of the accident is in bits and pieces—almost as freeze frame images.

EXCERPT: This moment has been, for all my life...more Here is the first line of this memoir:

Half my life ago, I killed a girl.

The girl who died is Celine Zilke—a 16-year-old girl who was attending the same Long Island high school as Strauss (who was 18 at the time of the accident). He takes us through what he can remember of the accident, in which Strauss’s car hit Zilke as she was riding her bike and swerved into his lane. He memory of the accident is in bits and pieces—almost as freeze frame images.

EXCERPT: This moment has been, for all my life, a kind of shadowy giant. I’m able, tick by tick, to remember each second before it. Radio; friends; thoughts of mini-golf; another thought of maybe just going to the beach; the distance between car and bicycle closing; anything could still happen. But I am powerless to see what comes next; the moment raises a shoulder, lowers its head, and slumps away.

Although the police clear him of wrongdoing, Strauss’s life is forever changed. From his struggles to live up to the promise he made to Celine’s mother (“Whatever you do in your life, you have to do it twice as well now because you are living for two people”) to his need to face judgment in a public forum, Strauss is influenced in a thousand different ways by the accident and his inability to know how to feel about it and cope with its aftermath.

EXCERPT: But something in me—the same tiny something that had longed for Melanie Urquhart’s anger—craved, finally, a decision from twelve people. They’d hear witnesses, cops, statistics, the journal entry. It would no longer be just my daily fluctuating opinion. The official world would have to listen, nod, and answer the question of that highway and that day. A government-sanctioned conclusion: you are culpable; you are blameless. This could bring ruin as easily as release. but the one sure thing it would bring was an end.

Written in spare and elegant prose, the book is never exploitative or self-pitying. Instead, Strauss strips things down to the bone and offers brutally honest assessments of what he was thinking, feeling and experiencing as he struggles to come to terms with the accident. As you might imagine, it is a process that never truly comes to an end and offers no clear-cut answers. Like a ghost, Celine accompanies Darin through his twenties and thirties—present at every first, at every important moment in life. She is the conversation he tries to avoid but eventually must always have. Only when he has moved further in time from the accident (half a life away) is he able to start exploring the full impact and meaning of the accident.

EXCERPT: It’s not that I outran Celine, or that half of my life. It’s the reverse. The accident taught me this. Things don’t go away. They become you. There is no end, as T.S. Eliot somewhere says, but addition: the trailing consequence of further days and hours. No freedom from the past, or from the future. But we keep making our way, as we have to. We’re all pretty much able to deal even with the worst that life can fire at us, if we simply admit that it is very difficult. I think that’s the whole of the answer. We make our way, and effort and time give us cushion and dignity. As as we age, we’re riding higher in the saddle, seeing more terrain. So it’s an epiphany after all. You have it in your hand the whole time.

I imagine that is was difficult to write this memoir, and I’m thankful that Strauss was able to look deep within and offer up his experiences in this book. By doing so, he creates a haunting story that resonates long after you turn the last page.(less)

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About Darin Strauss

A recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship and a winner of the American Library Association's Alix Award and The National Book Critics Circle Award, the internationally-bestselling writer Darin Strauss is the author of the novels Chang & Eng, The Real McCoy, and More Than It Hurts You, and the NBCC-winning memoir Half a Life. These have been New York Times Notable Books, Newsweek, Los Angeles Ti...more

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