Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #607412 in Books
• Published on: 2007-02-08
• Released on: 2007-02-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Amazon.com Review
Halfway House, Katharine Noel's triumphant debut, does far more than expose the highs and lows of battling mental illness; rather, it leaves readers with a sense of longing that transcends the subject matter. Told from the perspective of five family members, Noel expertly captures each character's essence with unapologetic honesty, creating sympathies that would falter under a less gifted writer. The result is a profound look at how a crisis can both destroy and reinvent a seemingly typical family.

Set in rural New Hampshire, Halfway House tells the story of the Voorster family, whose lives are upended when 17-year-old Angie suffers a breakdown and is eventually diagnosed with bipolar disorder. As Angie shuffles between hospitals, dorm rooms, halfway houses, and her childhood home, the side effects of her disease and treatment impact each member of her family. Her father Pieter, a Dutch-born cellist, retreats into himself, while her mother Jordana begins an affair. Angie's brother Luke finds comfort in his girlfriends, especially Wendy, whom he meets while at college in Wisconsin. Eventually, familial relationships must be broken in order to be reinvented. In the process, family dynamics must shift, and each character must confront their own demons in order to emerge on the other side.

From One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest to Girl, Interrupted, the subject of mental illness is hardly uncharted in modern literature. What Noel does is go beyond the disease to explore the consequences of crisis, both punishing and redemptive, without compromise or excuses. That is what makes Halfway House a wonder, and a pleasure to behold. --Gisele Toueg

From Publishers Weekly
A New Hampshire family comes apart at the seams when Angie Voorster, an ostensibly perfect high school senior and swim team star falls off the edge of mental stability. Among those affected are Pieter, Angie's emotionally inarticulate father; her mother, Jordana, 15 years Pieter's junior and seeking solace in the arms of a younger man; and Angie's younger brother, Luke, who becomes his sister's keeper. Debut novelist Noel brings these characters to life, exposing every blemish and desire, and revealing them in all their messy humanness. Over the next several years, bipolar Angie struggles to adjust to life derailed by mental illness, ever-changing prescriptions and their side effects: "She couldn't even lay claim to her own thoughts. Was she the thoughts she had on meds, when her brain was as it should be? Or was she the thoughts she had off meds, her brain as it really was?" Noel unflinchingly constructs scenes with a cinematographer's eye and injects humor into a world of chronic insomnia and suicide attempts. She resists sensationalizing or romanticizing mental illness, and with sympathetic knowledge of the subject (she worked at a mental health home), her keen insights are spot-on. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Noel's moving debut considers the ways manic depression touches each member of an afflicted family, and what distinguishes her novel from others in this subgenre is her uncanny ability to convey the rigors of the disease as experienced by the patient. When bright and athletic Angie Voorster experiences a sudden mental breakdown at age 17, she goes from the hospital to a "farm" for five months. She repeats her senior year, rejoins the swim team, and applies to college. From outside the Voorster home, things appear to be back to normal; in reality, Angie's mother, Jordana, is having an affair, her brother Luke is slipping out each night and not returning until dawn, and Angie is barely keeping herself together. She makes it through seven months at Middlebury College, then overdoses on lithium and ends up in a halfway house. Noel, who has worked with mentally ill adults, takes the reader step by agonizing step through Angie's manic and depressive episodes in fiction realistic enough to make the reader cringe, creating a potent, informative, and compassionate novel. Deborah Donovan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Gorgeous book
I stayed up late into the night reading Halfway House until my eyes stung, then started early the next morning, in my eagerness to return to this story, these people. The gift of Halfway House is the strength of its characters. They are true to themselves in their smallest actions and biggest moments of drama. They make mistakes, they love hard, they are real and unforgettable. On one level, this is a book about mental illness and its repercussions. But it's not the story you may have read before, in which a person is depicted as a victim of mental illness, that diagnosis (whatever it may be) taking the place of character. Rather, the writer shows how Angie's manic depression is one facet of who she is, and while its repercussions shake the whole household, the lives of her parents and brother are equally multi-faceted and well developed. Another thing I admire in its fresh treatment of mental illness is the way that the book shows the cyclical nature of Angie's disease as she goes on and off medication. This is the rare novel that manages to be both sprawling and focused. The chapters remind me of short stories in the sense that many of them hinge on quiet moments with large consequences. Yet tension builds from chapter to chapter, which is why I found the book so hard to put down. I simply loved it.

Amazing ,Gripping Read
I read an online review of this book in my Amazon recommends.I took a chance,and I just finished this incredibly gripping read in less than 2 days.I actually have a hand cramp from holding the book for so long without rest.
I felt like it was my family,or so many families out there who have to deal with mental illness and family stress.I didn't want this book to end.I can't wait to read what Ms.Noel comes out with next.I highl recommend this book!You won't be dissapointed.

Compelling, realistic story of young manic/depressive woman
It is not surprising to read that the author of HALFWAY HOUSE Katharine Noel, has spent time working with the mentally ill as this book is very believable as well as beautifully written. Noel describes the repeated roller coaster rides that define the life of manic/depressives realistically and without undue sentiment. Though we sympathize with Angie we never forget what a difficult, needy and often unattractive person her mental illness has made her. Yet through her experiences she retains insight into life and at times a sense of humor. The book tells much of the story from the viewpoint of Angie's mother, father, brother, and brother's girlfriend/wife. These characters are all well drawn - warts and all.