Reprinted with permission:

From: Ann Skea <[log in to unmask]>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.reviews
Subject: REVIEW: In the Half Light by Anthony Lawrence
Date: 29 Nov 2000 22:53:58 -0300

Title:          In the Half Light
Author:         Anthony Lawrence
Publisher:              Picador, PanMacmillan (Nov. 2000)
ISBN:           0 330 36235 6
Cost:           A$35.00( hardback)      384pages

                                 Reviewed by Ann Skea

                 "What is nameless in childhood, no matter how strange or
terrifying, can often
                 be tolerated, even nurtured, because there are no points
of reference with
                 which to align fear or danger. My headlights, and the
sounds that began to
                 accompany them shortly after I was born, became a source
of constant
                 amazement, even pleasure".

James Malloy's parents knew that he was a strange and seemingly wayward
child but they had no idea that there was anything seriously wrong. And
James himself could not explain the lights and colours inside his head, or
the voices and thoughts which sometimes slipped from his mouth. Others told
him what he had said but often he did not believe them.

Even as he grew to understand that he was somehow different, he did not
know how or why until the day he played truant from school and found
himself following a woman home from the railway station. She, too, seemed
to say things without knowing it and James desperately wanted to speak to her.

 From this casual encounter came some knowledge and comfort, and many other
things beside.

Stephanie, the woman James followed home and persuaded to talk to him,
becomes immensely important in his life. She befriends him briefly then
vanishes, leaving him only a book of photographs of Ireland, a poetry book
and a poem. But by this time she has given him a name for his condition,
which she shares. Schizophrenia: "Two people in the same body...two people
who share the same breath, light, smoke, drink, terrible thoughts and
dreaming", is how she describes it.  She  insists that he tell his parents
that he needs professional help, and, most importantly, she persuades him
to write down the things he experiences inside his head.

I have no idea whether Anthony Lawrence has direct experience of
schizophrenia, and no idea if what he describes of it is real or imaginary.
But this does not matter, because the way he tells the story of James's
young life has an immediacy which makes it feel wholly authentic.This is a
remarkably accomplished first novel, and Lawrence has a poet's ear for the
rhythm of language and a poetic ability to convey thoughts, feelings and
emotions with powerful directness.

James comes across as a likeable young man who, most of the time, leads a
fairly normal life amongst friends acknowledge and accept his difference.
And, although the 'headlights' and voices which sometimes disrupt his metal
equilibrium are a problem (which James can generally control with
medication), they are also vivid experiences which feed his imagination and
his writing. He comes to value them for this.

So, James tells his own story. And his growth to adulthood is both common
and unique, as are all our stories. He sees the effects of his own problem
on each of his parents: his father's difficulty in accepting that his son
need psychiatric help; his mother's puzzlement overcome by her love and her
desire to help him. He sees their marital difficulties and the confused
emotions of two people who love each other but have grown apart, and he
forges new relationships with each of them. He runs away from home to live
in the bush and meets an odd loner who teaches him about fish and persuades
him to return home. And he has his own experiences of growing up, love and
loss to deal with. When the shock of an unexpected death tips him over into
madness which, for a time, no medication will help, James's description of
this time is as strange and disturbing as such experiences must truly be.

James's recovery, his subsequent journey to Ireland to search for
Stephanie, and the forging of new friendships and a new life, are
skillfully told, but this was the only part of the book in which I felt
some authorial loss of direction. James's story became almost too
authentic, too full of touristic novelty and irrelevant detail, and the
thread of action loosened (as it often does in real life). The dramatic
ending wove it all back into place with, at the last, a not altogether
unsignalled neatness leaving James and the reader to a hopeful but
predictably troubled future. But, on the whole,  growing up with James was
an interesting, moving and curious experience. And Lawrence is good, too,
at bringing even the most fleeting of his characters to life.

In all, Anthony Lawrence has written a very readable and unusual book. His
name is one which I certainly intend to remember and I hope to see more of
his writing in the future.

*******************************************
Copyright © Ann Skea 2000
http://ann.skea.com/

Standard disclaimers apply.
For permission to reproduce this text in any form contact Dr Ann Skea
<[log in to unmask]>


Skea, Sydney, Australia.  [[log in to unmask]]
                          [[log in to unmask]]
http://ann.skea.com/


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