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Title: Half a Heart

Author: Rosellen Brown

Narrator: Jayne Atkinson, LisaGay Hamilton

Format: Abridged

Length: 5 hrs and 54 mins

Language: English

Release date: 02-19-10

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio

Ratings: 5 of 5 out of 2 votes

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

Rosellen Brown's extraordinary new novel, Half a Heart, tells the story of a former civil rights activist, Miriam Vener, who feels trapped in the comfortable white upper-middle-class life she leads with her family in Houston in the 1980's. That life suddenly shatters with the appearance, after almost 18 years, of Veronica (Ronnee), her biracial daughter, born of Miriam's passionate affair a generation ago with Eljay, a brilliant black professor at a Mississippi college, who has raised the child ever since. When Miriam introduces her daughter to the utterly white New England town where she summers, and to the Houston society which represents the compromise of her sixties ideals, the results are complicated: What claim does Miriam have on Ronnee after all this time, and what does Ronnee want of her mother now?

Ronnee wrestles with her fury at her mother's mysterious disappearance from her life. With which family -- and which race -- does Ronnee identify?

Half a Heart is a profoundly moving story about estrangement and intimacy, race and privilege, identity and belonging.

Members Reviews:

Disappointing

Although this novel tried to explore the issues surrounding inter-racial relationships and children born to those relationship, this novel was very primitive, pedantic and lacked insight and depth. It was a poorly written novel. It skipped from one train of thought to the other with any sense of connection. The novel did absolutely nothing to explore the particular issues faced by parents and children of mixed heritage.

Also disturbing was that I found the book to be somewhat stereotypical in its characterization of situationsi.e., the wealthy privileged Jewish mother, the militant father, the poor manipulative daughter, the lifestyle in Texas, the reaction of the step father etc.

The issue of the condition, treatment and specific situations faced by mixed heritage children, particularly those with a black and white parent, carries such significance and has so many implication. I felt the author dealt with these issues casually or not at all. To that extent, I found the novel shallow and somewhat insulting. It would have been good had the author done a little research and spoken with individuals of mixed heritage before she attempted to write a book in this area. Anyone interested in reading a good book in this area should read "The Color of Water" by James McBride. Excellant novel written by someone who has had first hand experience in this area.

Frustrating and Disappointing Novel

Poorly written novel which was difficult to finish. The novel was more about the issues of the mother and less about establishing and maintaining a relationship with a daughter that she had not seen in 17 years. It was somewhat impractible to believe that this mother would give up the child she had raised for 8 months without a fight. Second, it was curious that it would take her 17 years to track her down. I did not find that the story maintained a consistent stream of conciousness and the author appeared to jump from one scene to another without intergrating the various themes. I failed to see the significance of some characters, such as Justin and the re-emergence of Jewel. I also found the novel to be incredibly stereotypical of blacks, whites, Jews, southerners etc. The stereotypes were perhaps the biggest disappointment.