Halfway House by Katharine Noel
One day, Angie Voorster - all-star swimmer and college-bound student - dives to the bottom of a pool and stays there. In that moment, everything the Voorster family believes they know about one another changes. Halfway House is the story of Angie's psychotic break and her family's subsequent turmoil. Angie is a charismatic young woman - brilliant, witty, and passionate - until she swings to manic highs or dangerous lows. As Angie trials varying medications and is in and out of hospitals and treatment centres, each of her family members responds differently to the ongoing crisis. Her father Pieter, a Dutch-born professional cellist, retreats further into his music; her mother begins a destabilising affair with a younger man; her younger brother, Luke, first distances himself as much as possible from his sister, then later drops out of college to be closer to her. Their attempts to maintain an outward show of normality only serve to highlight how fragile their little family unit has become. But, it is not until Angie is finally able to fend for herself that the family is able truly come to terms with what has happened and start again, in a new, fundamentally changed way.
"'In Katharine Noel's stunning debut novel, family life is revealed - laid open - in all its love and warmth and, yes, its darkness, tooMother and daughter, husband and wife, sister and brother, father and son: each character lives on the page, and together they teach us the best lessons of fiction: how we live, and how we live through crisis. I was enthralled.' Ann Packer, author of The Dive from Clausen's Pier 'Noel unflinchingly constructs scenes with a cinematographer's eye and injects humour into a world of chronic insomnia and suicide attempts. She resists sensationalizing or romanticizing mental illness, and with sympathetic knowledge of the subject, her keen insights are spot-on.' Publishers Weekly"
Katherine Noel is a Jones Lecturer at Stanford University where she formerly held a Stegner Fellowship. Her writing has won grants from the Henfield-Transatlantic, Barbara Demming and Rone Jaffe Foundations, and was included in Best New American Voices 2003.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780749937034 |
| ISBN 10 | 0749937033 |
| Title | Halfway House |
| Author | Katharine Noel |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Little, Brown Book Group |
| Year published | 2006-09-07 |
| Number of pages | 384 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |