The Half Brother
A Novel
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
At the end of World War II, twenty-year-old Vera is brutally raped by an unknown assailant. From that rape is born a boy named Fred, a misfit who later becomes a talented boxer. Vera’s young son, Barnum, forms a special but bizarre relationship with his half brother, fraught with rivalry and dependence as well as love. “I should have been your father,” Fred tells Barnum, “instead of the fool who says he is.”
It is Barnum, who is now a screenwriter with a fondness for lies and alcohol, who narrates his family’s saga. As he shares his family’s history, he chronicles generations of independent women and absent and flawed men whom he calls the Night Men. Among them is his father, Arnold, who bequeaths to Barnum his circus name, his excessively small stature, and a con man’s belief in the power of illusion.
Filled with a galaxy of finely etched characters, this prize-winning novel is a tour de force and a literary masterpiece richly deserving of the accolades it has received.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Epic yet startlingly contemporary, this massive novel charts 50 years in the life of an unconventional Oslo family, lighted by gleams of the frozen north and the glow of movie screens. Narrator Barnum, an award-winning screenwriter, retraces his family's history, which begins with the rape of his mother, Vera, as a young girl at the end of World War II. From this crime, Barnum's half-brother, Fred, is conceived. Fred is angry, prone to mood swings and outbursts of verbal cruelty. But he is also street-smart, self-reliant and fiercely if erratically protective of Barnum, a small, sensitive boy who never grows to full height. The boys live with Vera and an extended family of spirited, loving women, including the Old One, Barnum's great grandmother (a former silent movie actress), and his beer-drinking grandmother, Boletta. Barnum's father is Arnold Nilsen, an itinerant con man, who woos and marries Vera. When Barnum is almost grown up, unpredictable Fred goes to sea and disappears, leaving Barnum angry and confused. Barnum finds companionship and love through his relationships with friends Peder and Vivian, eventually marrying Vivian, but their connection unravels, particularly with Vivian's pregnancy a pregnancy that torments Barnum, who is secretly infertile. Barnum's conflicted, complicated love for his brother anchors the novel, but Christensen tenderly explores all sorts of human connection, examining the emotions aroused by absence and persistence, and the complex nature of family and forgiveness. Like P ter N das's Book of Memories and P ter Esterh zy's Celestial Harmonies, this is a challenging, marvelously rich novel steeped in European history and charged by present-day anxieties.
