Half the Kingdom

New York Times Notable Book 2013At once wry and poingnant. -The New YorkerA masterwork...Both wise and deeply enjoyable. -Cynthia Ozick, author of Foreign BodiesThe renowned New Yorker writer and Pulitzer Prize finalist Lore Segal-whom The New York Times declared closer than anyone to writing the Great American Novel-delivers a hilarious, poignant and profoundly moving tale of living, loving and aging in America todayAt Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, doctors have noticed a marked uptick in Alzheimer's patients. People who seemed perfectly lucid just a day earlier suddenly show signs of advanced dementia. Is it just normal aging, or an epidemic? Is it a coincidence, or a secret terrorist plot?In the looking-glass world of Half the Kingdom-where terrorist paranoia and end-of-the-world hysteria mask deeper fears of mortality; where parents' and their grown children's feelings vacillate between frustration and tenderness; and where the broken medical system leads one character to quip, Kafka wrote slice-of-life fiction-all is familiar and yet slightly askew.Lore Segal masterfully interweaves her characters' lives-lives that, for good or for ill, all converge in Cedar's ER-into a funny, tragic, and tender portrait of how we live today.