Half Life
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
On the morning that changes everything, Aruna Ahmed Jones walks out of her ground-floor Victorian apartment in London wearing only jeans and a t-shirt, carrying nothing more substantial than a handbag, and keeps on walking. Leaving behind the handsome Dr. Patrick Jones, her husband of less than a year, Aruna heads to Heathrow, where she boards a plane bound for Singapore and her old life. Educated and beautiful, Aruna has a desperate need to risk it all. But why? Waiting for her is a messy past and a perfect past lover she had once abandoned without even saying goodbye – a story left unfinished – until now.
Aruna is not running away from home, she is running back to the home she always had, before it became impossible for her to stay. Before her father, the only family she'd ever known, passed away. Before she tried, and failed, to create a life and a family with her best friend and lover, Jazz. Before her doctor delivered a complicated psychological diagnosis she'd rather forget. After years of fleeing the ghosts that continue to haunt her, Aruna is about to discover that running away is really the easy part; it is coming home—making peace with her past, with Jazz and those they have loved—that is hard. Spanning the world from London to Singapore to India and back again, Half Life is a richly layered tale of love and conflict, friendship and sacrifice, the luminous story of a young woman who risks everything in order to find where she truly belongs.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this compelling tale, novelist Farooki (Bitter Sweets) follows Bengali doctor Aruna Ahmed Jones, who has impulsively married a British physician, hoping to forget a tragic romance with her old friend Ejaz Jazz Ahsan, who she left behind in Singapore's Little India. A recovering drug addict, Aruna has suffered from bipolar disorder and had a string of miscarriages during her time with Jazz, leaving her in a delicate state of mind; inspired by a letter from Jazz's adopted dad, who, in a parallel plot, is dying in a hospital in Malaysia, Aruna decides to leave her husband and return to Singapore to face Jazz and the terrible news that tore them apart. Farooki's hypnotic narrative is driven by a delicate, probing intensity, full of grace and poignancy.
Customer Reviews
The book made me feel
I love reading, enjoy stories of all sorts, and read a lot. However, every now and then I read a book that makes me feels pangs in my chest, and cry or laugh. This book made me cry, it is set in several cities, and different times, and I enjoyed it very much.