In the Half Light Book

With quiet optimism and a haunting poignancy, the award-winning poet Anthony Lawrence’s first novel explores the strange, sometimes marvelous, and entirely disorienting world of James Molloy. For however unexceptional James—an average student, a dutiful son—may appear to outsiders, he knows that he is different. He has visions, and in their eerie halflight two realities—the one that he lives in and the one that lives in him—collide, intermingle, coalesce. Sometimes out of the vibrant confusion inside his head come voices that glide from his mind into his mouth. Vision finds a language of its own. Alone, isolated by his difference, James faces a future without close companionship until the day that he meets Stephanie Riley, a sympathetic guide who leads him to unexpected truths, and then disappears. Driven to learn what lies at the center of his curious universe, James begins a heartrending journey that takes him from a tragic romantic interlude in rural Australia to the west coast of Ireland. There, even as he enters the emotionally turbulent world of Sarah Carmichael, a talented, hard-drinking fiddle player, James emerges into the clarity of self-awareness. And discovers at last the possibilities that lie in friendship, art, love, tomorrow.

Publishers Weekly

Already published overseas to widespread acclaim, this novel by prolific Australian poet Lawrence is an intensive, haunting coming-of-age tale centering on a boy's struggle with schizophrenia in Sydney. Fragile James Molloy, the story's narrator, is a tortured teenager who immediately acknowledges that he was a very strange child, since in frequent out-of-body incidents he saw headlights and heard bells and voices that spoke words seemingly held together by strings and hooks of light. As James matures, his gift becomes a burden as the fainting spells (now accompanied by incoherent speech) begin to frighten those around him. His first foray into romance is with a shop girl named Stephanie, also diagnosed as schizophrenic, and while she befriends James and he grows to love her, she soon disappears. James's parents, struggling to hold together a failing marriage, take him to several doctors for psychoanalysis. When prescribed medication alleviates the headlights, James hitchhikes into the bush, where he meets Colin, a strange loner living in a mountain cabin. A homecoming of tears and tea and cake resumes James's mostly unhappy life, compounded by the separation of his parents and a new relationship that ends tragically. Inspired by a book about Ireland left for him by Stephanie, James sets off for the faraway island, where pub life and a new fiddler friend named Sarah give him fresh reason to live and some sense of normalcy. The author presents a helpless, mentally unstable protagonist with enough dark baggage to sink a battleship, but thanks to Lawrence's poetic prose and steady pacing, his narration shines, making this unusual story enlightening and thought provoking. (June) Forecast: As yet unknown in the U.S., Lawrence will likely be warmly received by reviewers, though it may take him a few more books to build up name recognition among readers. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.