The Other Half of Me
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3.8 • 5 Ratings
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- £2.99
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- £2.99
Publisher Description
THE OTHER HALF OF ME by Morgan McCarthy is an evocative and haunting debut from a unique literary voice.
Jonathan and Theo's childhood is one in which money is abundant but nurture is scarce. With a father who died when they were very young and a mother who starts drinking at lunchtime, the brother and sister are largely left to roam around their sprawling estate in rural Wales, looking after only themselves and each other. Until, that is, their grandmother Eve returns to the family home. Eve is a figure who is as enchanting as she is forbidding, and she takes the children under her wing, answering their questions about their family history that have always been ignored. Yet as they grow older, they discover that much of what they've been told is a fiction, and that something very sinister lies in their past.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In McCarthy's evocative debut, the upper-class childhoods of seven-year-old Jonathan Anthony and his younger sister, Theo, are the stuff of a modern fairy tale. Growing up mostly unsupervised on a rambling Welsh manor called Evendon, the siblings, despite their differences (Jonathan is a good student, while Theo struggles to wrest her attention away from dreamy preoccupations), are inseparable, whether carousing in the secret garden, stealing canap s, or hiding beneath tables at fancy parties hosted by their grandmother, Eve, and graced by their drunken, detached mother. The garden, with its deep, dark pool, is emblematic for the children of Evendon's innumerable mysteries, as well as their aristocratic family's many secrets. The most affecting and curious for Jonathan and Theo is what really happened to their father; Eve told them he died years ago, but Theo believes otherwise, and this doubt threatens to drive her to insanity. Culminating in a tear-jerking conclusion, McCarthy deftly conjures the ghosts of the Anthony family's past to wreak havoc on and enrich its tragic present.
