Looking Back, Looking Ahead

“Half my life ago, I killed a girl.”

So begins Darin Strauss' searing memoir Half a Life. What begins as a personal tale of a tragic event and ends up opening into the story of how our lives are about defining moments, how we are affected by them, how they shape us. It is the true story of how one outing in his father's Oldsmobile resulted in the death of a classmate and the beginning of a different, darker life for the author. We follow Strauss as he explores his startling past--the collision, the funeral, the queasy drama of a high-stakes court case--and what starts as a personal tale of a tragic event opens into the story of how to live with a very hard fact: we can try our human best in the crucial moment, and it might not be good enough.

"Darin Strauss' Half a Life is the best anything I've read--novel, memoir, story--in a very long time. Incredibly, it's also the most moving."—David Lipsky, author of Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself

Darin Strauss is the author of the books Chang and Eng and The Real McCoy, and the bestseller More Than It Hurts You. He won the 2010 NBCC Award for Autobiography for his memoir Half a Life. Strauss currently teaches at New York University.

Darin Strauss reads from his memoir at Magers & Quinn on Wednesday, June 22, at 7:30pm. Details are here.--David E