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Half a Life

By V. S. Naipaul

(10)

| Paperback | 9780676975024

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Book Description

One of the finest living writers in the English language, V. S. Naipaul gives us a tale as wholly unexpected as it is affecting, his first novel since the exultantly acclaimed A Way in the World, published seven years ago.

Half a Life is the story of Willie Chandran, whose fatheContinue

Critics

Into the lion's den

Half a Life V S Naipaul 224pp, Picador, £15.99 Only someone who knows V S Naipaul's life and work well would have recognised a familiar event that preceded the publication of Half a Life, the slightest book Naipaul has ever written and unquestionably ... (read full critics)

guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

An innocent, but not at home

Willie Chandran, from a family of temple priests, grows up in a maharajah's state in the last days of the Raj. Mocked at school because his middle name is 'Somerset', he discovers that he was named after a great English writer who had a stammer and w ... (read full critics)

spectator published on Fri, 17 Sep 2010

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1 Review

A title recommended and passed on to me by my daughter recently. I read it in one afternoon session sitting in the shade in the garden.
As a little boy Willie Chandran wanted to know why his middle name was Somerset. His father explains that it was after the famous British writer Somerset Maug ... (continue)

A title recommended and passed on to me by my daughter recently. I read it in one afternoon session sitting in the shade in the garden.
As a little boy Willie Chandran wanted to know why his middle name was Somerset. His father explains that it was after the famous British writer Somerset Maugham. Willie of course wants to know why. This is the story that his father gradually tells him, of a son whom possibly should never have been born, while he is growing up and Willie is coming to terms with his origins. Growing up in India he leaves for London in the post war years, eventually falling in love and moving to Africa. A short biographical style story that I found rather sad as he felt he did not belong anywhere. Willie seemed such a pathetic man, hated by his father he appears to wander through his own life aimlessly trying to fit in with those around him. Once a misfit always a misfit; seems the easiest way of describing Willies discomfort with his life.

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Lindyloumac said on Sep 28, 2009 | Add your feedback