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A novel about politics, the power of film, the nature of history and, above all, about two people caught hopelessly in love, subject to the stresses of fame and scandal, by Booker Prize nominated author Justin Cartwright.
Richard McAllister, a young minister in the government, has temporarily left the Cabinet while recovering from being stabbed by a thug at a football match. He has decided, while recuperating, to go to South Africa to research a relative and his account of the horse in the Boer War. While in Mafeking, he is called back to London because his passionate affair with an actress has become public knowledge. From that moment, the love affair becomes almost impossibly fraught. The press hound them, the government spin doctors try to suppress all news and Joanna’s husband becomes very vindictive. The lovers are parted, and Joanna leaves for America.
Richard McAllister, a young minister in the government, has temporarily left the Cabinet while recovering from being stabbed by a thug at a football match. He has decided, while recuperating, to go to South Africa to research a relative and his account of the horse in the Boer War. While in Mafeking, he is called back to London because his passionate affair with an actress has become public knowledge. From that moment, the love affair becomes almost impossibly fraught. The press hound them, the government spin doctors try to suppress all news and Joanna’s husband becomes very vindictive. The lovers are parted, and Joanna leaves for America.
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Reviews
Half In Love has the invigorating feel and racing pace of any good love story
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.
Half in Love is a marvellous novel, serious, moving, compelling, wholly credible.
Intelligent and lucid
Cartwright has an unfashionable ear for sincerity, which ambushes modern readers used to seeing the false and flaky exposed.
This fine novel is also a powerful, irrestibly page-turning love-story.
[An] urbanely intelligent story of political and sexual manners
An absorbing novel... the writing is elegant and crisp
[Half in Love] is awash with neatly drawn minor characters - and knocks most contemporary fiction into a cocked hat.