The Half Life: A Novel [Paperback]

Jonathan Raymond (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 14, 2004

A dazzling debut novel about two friendships separated by generations but bound together by a dark mystery.

Cookie Figowitz is the cook for a party of volatile fur trappers trekking through the Oregon Territory in the 1820s, desperate to find their way to the newly created Hudson Bay Company before their meager supplies run out. As he forages for food one evening with the hopes of placating the increasingly restless men, Cookie stumbles over Henry Brown, a man on the run from violent Russians looking to settle an old score. Cookie takes Henry in, hiding him from the trappers, and the two begin an unlikely friendship that will take them from the virgin territory of the West all the way to China and back again.

Tina Plank is a teenager who has been unhappily transplanted to a Pacific Northwest commune in the 1980s. The only other girl her age within five miles is Trixie Volterra, whose troubled past only adds to her allure. Thrown together by circumstance, the two become fast friends, and are soon hard at work trying to make an elaborate movie on a shoestring budget. When, in the midst of filming, two skeletons are unearthed on the property, the lives of Cookie and Henry, Tina and Trixie converge in unexpected, startling ways.

With extraordinary power and grace, The Half-Life maps the complicated terrain of friendship, illuminating the odd pleasures and inevitable heartaches that bind us together.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Friendship is the theme of this ambitious and assured debut novel, which is set in Oregon and spans a hundred years of change in the region. In the 1820s, Cookie is a young man employed by a roughneck party of fur trappers as their cook. With food supplies running low, the mood is grim; on a foraging expedition Cookie discovers the bedraggled Henry, who is hiding from a band of murderous Russians, and stows him away in the chow wagon. After the party successfully reaches Fort Vancouver, the two shack up together in the woods, and Henry dreams up the get-rich scheme of traveling to China to sell castoreum oil, which they extract from beavers. In an alternating parallel narrative, set in the 1980s, two teenage girls living on a commune outside of Portland also form an alliance. Tina, a California transplant, bonds with Trixie, a girl with a troubled past. Matters become complicated on the commune when two skeletons are found on the property, setting off a political tug of war between forensic scientists and members of a local Indian tribe. As the two narratives alternateâ€"Cookie and Henry run into trouble in China, while Tina and Trixie scrimp and save to produce an amateur filmâ€"Raymond carefully probes the delicate imbalances that develop in both friendships. The synchronicity of the two stories is subtly engineered and never belabored; convergences are balanced by some unexpected divergences. Whether chronicling the hardscrabble culture of settlers in new territory or the discontent with sprawling overdevelopment generations later, Raymond supplies a wealth of detail about the Pacific Northwest, making plain both the rewards and sacrifices of progress. When tragedy strikes for both sets of friends, it feels as natural as the landscape, surely and deftly closing Raymond's circle of ambiguity, loss, loyalties and love.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

In the early nineteenth century, a half-starved band of fur trappers struggles through the Oregon woods. Their young, diffident cook is intimidated by the rougher members of the group. When another young man, fleeing from some vengeful Russians, stumbles into camp, a friendship blossoms. Move ahead to the Reagan era. A teenager is dragged by her mother to live in an Oregon commune. Lonely and resentful while living among slightly absurd, aging counterculturists, she is drawn to the only other young woman in the settlement, and as their bond grows, they work together on a film project. The discovery of a pair of skeletons buried on the commune provides the link between these pairs of friendships. Raymond, in his first novel, seamlessly links the two narratives with elegant and often haunting prose. The characters are finely drawn, and Raymond poses them against a seductively beautiful landscape. The dramatic tension is well managed, and the unfolding stories are emotionally stirring. Raymond is clearly a writer of enormous promise. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 350 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA; First Edition edition (May 14, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1582344485
• ISBN-13: 978-1582344485
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.6 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,955,926 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Next great novelist named Jonathan from Brooklyn!, May 11, 2004

By 

A. Zito "robot sailor" (Portland, OR, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Half Life: A Novel (Paperback)

Move over Lethem and Safron Foer, there's a new Jon in town, and he's made the scene like gangbusters with warrants. This is a sweet, smart debut, which flirts with epistemological questions about the nature of history and our place within (or outside) it, as well as a gentle-handed social satire (involving the rival factions vying for the discovered skeletons, and the subsequent media barrage that follows.) But ultimately, it's a story with a very human center, about three tightly-knit relationships spanning hundreds of years. It's this humanity that Raymond pulls off with aplomb, as the relationships are beautifully and delicately realized, without undue sentimentality or goo. (Yes, all the goo is due.)

I highly recommend it!

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Oregon Trail in the 1800's to Portland in the 1980's, July 16, 2004

By 

M. J Leonard "MikeonAlpha" (Silver Lake, Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Half Life: A Novel (Paperback)

Friendships, entrepreneurialism and the generational influences are at the heart of this beguiling, but predictable and slightly over-wrought book by Jonathan Raymond. With its duel narrative, that readily switches backwards and forwards in time, The Half-Life, is at once a successful historical epic set in the 1800's, and an effective portrait of the mid-eighties Regan era. Two friendships are separated by generations but bound together by a dark mystery: A pair of skeletons are discovered at the edge of Portland's Forest Park which sparks a clash between forensic science and Native American rights. The identity of the skeletons is the mystery at the heart of the story, but the eventual unveiling of them will come as no great surprise to the reader.

Stretching from the late 1820s to the early 1860s, the earlier of his two narratives follows Cookie Figowitz whom the reader first encounters as a camp cook for a party of fur trappers whose supplies of food are running out. As he forages for food one evening with the hopes of placating the increasingly restless men, Cookie stumbles over Henry Brown, a man on the run from violent Russians looking to settle an old score. The two friends have a desire to become rich so they devise a trading scheme that takes them to China, where under very different circumstances Cookie strikes up a new friendship with a calligrapher, King Lu.

The more recent story line, from the 1980s, involves two teenage girls: Tina Plank, a recent transplant from California, and Trixie Volterra, who earlier came from California shrouded in a shady, drug fueled past. They're the only young people living among aging hippies in a commune on the fringes of Portland, and the bond they forge leads to their own scheme - a film project, which they throw themselves into with indisputable enthusiasm. When, in the midst of filming, the two skeletons are unearthed on the property, the nexus of the two narratives converge and the lives of Cookie and Henry, Tina and Trixie converge in unexpected ways.

The Half-Life has the right ingredients of a mystery - two unidentified skeletons from the past, a man trapped in a prison in a foreign country, and a battle between forensic science and the spirituality of native heritage. But rather than constructing the plot around the conventional thriller Raymond is more concerned with questions of history, and he insists that we become aware of the complex and shifting base of our identities and our behaviors. The world of this novel seems polarized between two radically different time periods, however, the characters, in both times periods, are assertive, entrepreneurial and excitingly individualistic. The novel also effectively juxtaposes the modern with the historical Pacific Northwest, and there are some beautifully disquieting passages highlighting Raymond's skill as a prose writer.

However, this reader felt that The Half-Life sprawled in too many directions and had far too many forced narrative developments. Raymond is trying to say too much, and towards the end, as the mystery becomes clearer, the narrative tends to loose focus. The Half-Life, however, does have some moments of surprising power and grace, revealing the pleasures and heartaches that can unavoidably bind us to one another. The ambiguities of friendship, the fact that a person's life is completed only by friendship, and that friendships can be formed under the most unlikely of scenarios, is at the thematic heart of this novel. Mike Leonard July 04.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A gorgeous and vivid debut Novel!, March 7, 2007

By 

Matty Lee "Matty Lee" (Los Angels, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Half Life: A Novel (Paperback)

This novel is so rich and so full of beauty I don't even know where to begin. I'll start my saying that Raymond has mastered the English language. I found myself reading and re-reading the same line over and over again sometimes not being able to continue the book until the poetry of a certain line would sink in. Raymond uses even the simplest phrases in the most elegant ways and I found myself recalling his exact words days and even weeks after reading them.

OK, three words... location, location, location! Raymond uses such incredibly beautiful descriptions. The setting comes alive in this novel like no other book I've ever read. As a reader you feel it, you hear it, you smell it and you taste it as if you're there. I am in awe that this is a debut novel. After reading the first few chapters I had to look Raymond up to see if he wasn't some famous naturalist. I felt as if I was reading the journal of an early scientist exploring the Northwest Territory. It seems that Mr. Raymond knows every bird, plant, weed and stone in Oregon by name and yet he describes them to the reader in almost childlike simplicity. My theory has always been that if someone really knows something well, then they can describe it and make it understood even to a child. To me, Raymond knows Oregon like the back of his hand and I used to live there. They should make this novel mandatory reading for all Pacific Northwesterners so they can appreciate the beauty and the mystery of the region.

Then there's the cooking... Did you ever see the movie "Like Water for Chocolate"? I felt like I was reading a written sequel. I must have gained five pounds just reading it. The cooking scenes are fantastic and made my mouth water and my eyes burn.

Besides all that, the novel is haunting. I have no idea what the reviewers below are talking about by "lack of character development". Did we read the same book? Did you get through the first two pages or did your short little attention span get the better of you again? This novel is packed full of the most incredible characters. Simple, yet profound Neil, volatile Trixie Voltera, Tina the lost girl, the young romantic dreamer Henry, the serious and mysterious King Lu and Cookie! What about Cookie? Seriously, were you reading the same book as me? Cookie is the first time since reading "Giovann's Room" that I absolutely fell in love with a character! This is possibly the gentlest and most Zen character ever written!

OK, then the ending. First let me say that I love David Mitchell, but I get down on him for always wrapping his books into neat little packages in the end. Sorry David, but that's not doing it for me. Life is complex and so is "The Half Life". It always seems to me like Mitchell is trying to be Murakami in a way but with happy endings. Raymond perfectly captures the complexities of life and the struggle we all share for closeness and contact but to me it appears as if he wasn't even trying which is a sure sign that he was. The book and the ending definitely have a Eastern feel which brings Murakami to mind but the comparisons stop there. "The Half Life" is to me a completely unique book which stands by itself. Raymond fuses what must be an incredibly diverse background in history, natural sciences, English, film making and a little partying in the Northwest with a deceptively simple style and the heart of a poet and naturalist.

If you like:
Murakami
David Mitchell
Thoreau
James Baldwin
Jack London
Jared Diamond
Nature
Film Making
or if you live in the Pacific Northwest or if you like incredibly rich love stories that aren't what they appear,
THEN BUY THIS BOOK!