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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Justin Cartwright's sixth novel, Half in Love, follows on from the success of Leading the Cheers, which won the Whitbread Novel Award in 1998. It opens in Cartwright's native South Africa where a British MP, Richard McAllister is recovering from a knife attack and researching the life of his great-uncle, a major and horse vet in the Boer War. Not only does the attack reveal Richard's mortality, but also his complex morality--he believes that he somehow deserved the assault: "Being stabbed was to find without seeking". He is called back to London when the press leak the story of his affair with Joanna Jermyn,a famous actress and star of the movie "Half in Love"--and a married woman.
What makes Cartwright's protagonists lively, multi-faceted and compelling is their acute and ashamed self-awareness. Both were attracted to power through "a desire for divinity" and as the media begin to control their every move, they recognise that fame and political success provide no protection. "Their love, which had seemed Olympian, had been directed down to street level". Like the war heroes of their past, their place in history becomes increasingly fragile as the affair and the attack accrue national curiosity and political repercussions.
Cartwright is a master at detailing the "amateur dramatic gothicness of Parliament" and the "range of small vanities" Richard enjoys. He also applies a shrewd satiric wit to the world of luvvies where champagne is the "PR antibiotic" and American English "more suited to the task at hand". As well as delivering a piercing critique of class and aspiration, Cartwright's delightfully urbane and fluid novel also investigates Englishness with the sharp, uncompromising eye of the outsider. "Englishness had become a self-parody", thinks Joanna, whose fame rests on "playing an icy English bitch ... a type that no longer existed outside films and plays". As the old certainties collapse around them, Richard and Joanna try to assemble a new code of nobility. Encumbered by values they once scorned, their journey from self-love to something more testing is extremely consoling, satisfying and humane. An excellent, highly contemporary novel about vanity and seduction. --Cherry Smyth --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
'Half In Love has the invigorating feel and racing pace of any good love story' (Hampstead and Highgate Express )
'Cartwright's tender, ironic, but ultimately optimistic dissection of human love is as shrewd and unshrinking as his conclusions about politics and journalism... Half in Love is a marvel of compression, of characterisation and of tightly cast thought. It is also very moving and utterly gripping, to which the author has cleverly added a sly whiff of the roman-à-clef.' (The Times )
'Half in Love is a marvellous novel, serious, moving, compelling, wholly credible.' (Weekend Scotsman )
'Intelligent and lucid' (The Times )
'Cartwright has an unfashionable ear for sincerity, which ambushes modern readers used to seeing the false and flaky exposed.' (Saturday Telegraph )
'This fine novel is also a powerful, irrestibly page-turning love-story.' (Harpers & Queen )
'[An] urbanely intelligent story of political and sexual manners' (The Sunday Times )
'An absorbing novel... the writing is elegant and crisp' (Sunday Telegraph )
'[Half in Love] is awash with neatly drawn minor characters - and knocks most contemporary fiction into a cocked hat.' (The Spectator )
'Cartwright's tender, ironic, but ultimately optimistic dissection of human love is as shrewd and unshrinking as his conclusions about politics and journalism... Half in Love is a marvel of compression, of characterisation and of tightly cast thought. It is also very moving and utterly gripping, to which the author has cleverly added a sly whiff of the roman-à-clef.' (The Times )
'Half in Love is a marvellous novel, serious, moving, compelling, wholly credible.' (Weekend Scotsman )
'Intelligent and lucid' (The Times )
'Cartwright has an unfashionable ear for sincerity, which ambushes modern readers used to seeing the false and flaky exposed.' (Saturday Telegraph )
'This fine novel is also a powerful, irrestibly page-turning love-story.' (Harpers & Queen )
'[An] urbanely intelligent story of political and sexual manners' (The Sunday Times )
'An absorbing novel... the writing is elegant and crisp' (Sunday Telegraph )
'[Half in Love] is awash with neatly drawn minor characters - and knocks most contemporary fiction into a cocked hat.' (The Spectator )
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Reading Justin Cartwright's novel was amazing. I have to say, I didn't expect to like it as much as I did. Some of the reviews here are very negative, and because I am a critical person, I expected to sympathise with them.
I think, however, that these reviewers are missing the point. This novel does have a love story as its main plot, but it is really about the universal love story, and about the main themes of life. It manages to cover love, war, mortality, and morality. It marries politics with art, and contrasts the unapologetically urban with poetic countrysides. It also deals well with the cultural differences between England and America.
To fit these things in a novel without it being preachy, tedious, or smugly self-satisfied is a real accomplishment. Whilst I didn't find Joanna a sympathetic character, her lack of moral fibre was ideal to offset Richard's staunchness.
This was a beautiful, gripping, poignant novel, which I would reccommend to anybody able to read beneath the very polished surface.
I think, however, that these reviewers are missing the point. This novel does have a love story as its main plot, but it is really about the universal love story, and about the main themes of life. It manages to cover love, war, mortality, and morality. It marries politics with art, and contrasts the unapologetically urban with poetic countrysides. It also deals well with the cultural differences between England and America.
To fit these things in a novel without it being preachy, tedious, or smugly self-satisfied is a real accomplishment. Whilst I didn't find Joanna a sympathetic character, her lack of moral fibre was ideal to offset Richard's staunchness.
This was a beautiful, gripping, poignant novel, which I would reccommend to anybody able to read beneath the very polished surface.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
his is a sensational book about life today. It's about celebrity and the impossibility of living with it, as well as
being a searing love story with what is - probably - a happy ending. It's amazing that after six books Justin
Cartwright's prose is as fresh and gripping as ever. I can't really recommend this one enough, a combination of
acute observation and - is he going soft?- great humanity.
being a searing love story with what is - probably - a happy ending. It's amazing that after six books Justin
Cartwright's prose is as fresh and gripping as ever. I can't really recommend this one enough, a combination of
acute observation and - is he going soft?- great humanity.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is a sensational book about life today. It's about celebrity and the impossibility of living with it, as well as being a searing love story with what is - probably - a happy ending. It's amazing that after six books Justin Cartwright's prose is as fresh and gripping as ever. I can't really recommend this one enough, a combination of acute observation and - is he going soft?- great humanity.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
A strangely absorbing tale, finely written.
A thinly disguised and now dated array of new Labour characters don't detract from a well-written and moving tale of love lost and re-found. Read more
Published on 1 Jun 2008 by Kevin Fallon
Nearly a good book
This book seems to polarise views. I have to side with the negative reviewers. I enjoyed the first few pages and had high expectations, but Cartwright's style quickly becomes... Read more
Published on 28 Aug 2004
Half in love, wholly involved.
A tour de Force of political manouevres of the New Labour kind with a dash of animals, movie stars and scandal. Read more
Published on 23 May 2003 by Rhys M Watkins
Stunning love story, with depth
Although this is set against a background of modern politics in Britain, it is a classic love story. Read more
Published on 6 April 2002
Uninspiring
I stopped reading this half way through, which I very seldom do. I had no feelings for any of the characters and found the style of writing pretentious and unappealing.
Published on 19 Mar 2002 by ruthr@waitrose.com
Fine contemporary novel
Justin Cartwright has been acclaimed as one of our finest novelists. I would agree on this evidence. Read more
Published on 18 Feb 2002 by leonie.fox@virgin.net.co.uk
half asleep
i was sucked in by the good reviews on the jacket but i must be reading a different book to everybody else because i am totally bored by this. to me, it seems dead. Read more
Published on 4 Feb 2002
Fine, very contemporary novel.
Justin Cartwright has been acclaimed as our foremost contemporary novelist. I would agree. The subjects of his novels vary, but I think they are usually about the human... Read more
Published on 4 Feb 2001
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