The Half Moon
A deeply moving story about love, marriage and forgiveness from the New York Times bestselling author
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4.0 • 3 Ratings
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- £8.99
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- £8.99
Publisher Description
The story about a marriage in crisis that you will not be able to put down from the New York Times bestselling author of Ask Again, Yes
‘A fearless writer’
Lisa Taddeo
‘Compelling, touching, exquisitely crafted . . . I adored this story’
Liane Moriarty
'Keane writes to the heart of the human heart. I could not put this book down'
Miranda Cowley-Heller, author of The Paper Palace
‘A writer of extraordinary depth, feeling and wit’
Meg Wolitzer, author of The Female Persuasion
‘Luminous . . . She manages to find the extraordinary grace in our achingly ordinary world'
New York Times
'I fell in love with The Half Moon from the first page, and barely looked up until I'd finished.'
Sara Collins
‘Such a delicate story about the real heartbreaks of life’
Claire Daverley, author of Talking at Night
‘One of our finest writers on the interior complexities of marriage and family. I ran my finger over sentences while reading, thinking: Yes, exactly.’
Ann Napolitano, author of Hello Beautiful
There are two sides to every story - and every marriage in crisis. . .
Malcolm is a bartender at the Half Moon in Upstate New York. He has always dreamed of owning a bar, and so when his boss finally retires, he seizes his chance, despite his wife's protests.
Jess has devoted herself to her law career. After years of trying for a baby, she's struggling to accept the idea that motherhood might not be in her future. She finds herself slipping away from both her career and her marriage.
When a blizzard hits on the same day that Malcolm learns some shocking news about Jess, and a regular at the bar goes missing, everyone is frozen in place for a single, pivotal week, forcing Malcolm and Jess to confront their uncertain future.
A beautiful, unforgettable story of love and second chances, for fans of The Paper Palace, Hello Beautiful and Tom Lake.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Keane (Ask Again, Yes) takes a nuanced look at a troubled marriage during a fraught week of blizzards and power outages in a predominantly Irish New York City suburb. "Handsome and charming" Malcolm Gephardt, 45, finally recognizes that "middle age is looming," and that the Half Moon, the bar he owns, is in dire straits. His wife, Jess, an attorney, left him several months earlier, having been worn out by seven years of failed fertility treatments and discouraged by Malcolm's refusal to include her in financial decisions. He has held out hope that Jess will come back, until he learns she's involved with a fellow lawyer who has three young children. Keane surrounds her main characters with a crew of nosy people who regularly check in on Malcolm ("part of him suspected these friends, grown men, all in their mid-forties, loved the excuse to leave their families on a Saturday afternoon"), and livens the proceedings with juicy subplots about a shady loan with terms enforced by even shadier goons, the mysterious disappearance of a bar patron, and Malcolm's mother, who, unbeknownst to Malcolm, has been carrying on an affair with the neighbor who plows her driveway. Keane pulls off a quiet, contemplative novel about the dwindling time for second chances.
