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    Half Life
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    Half Life
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    Half Life
    Audiobook7 hours

    Half Life

    Written by Roopa Farooki

    Narrated by Tania Rodrigues

    3.5/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this audiobook

    With her marriage in tatters, Aruna suddenly left her adoring husband, Patrick, in the middle of breakfast, walked out of their London flat and caught a flight to her native Singapore. There she finds her former lover, Jazz, who has never stopped loving her. After years spent fleeing the ghosts of her past, Aruna is about to discover that running away is easy. It is coming home that is hard.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherW. F. Howes Ltd
    Release dateJan 1, 2011
    ISBN9781407471174
    Unavailable
    Half Life
    Author

    Roopa Farooki

    Roopa Farooki was born in Pakistan, and brought up in London. She is the author of the Double Detective mystery series and is an NHS doctor.

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    Reviews for Half Life

    3.5/5

    58 ratings18 reviews

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    • 3/5
      I like how the book is sinuous; the transitions between the characters' points-of-view are smooth. Within those sections, however, the writing can get very choppy and inconsistent. Furthermore, although I feel like I understand the characters of Hari Hassan, Jazz, and even Zaida, I do not understand Rooney's motivations at all, and, by extension, any part of any other character's life that overlaps hers. She just seems to do things just to do them and there is no explanation as to why she behaves so deplorably aside from "it's the bipolar disorder!" People with bipolar disorder have motivations, just exaggerated ones.I enjoyed the conclusion to one of the plotlines but not the other. I like how the mystery about the siblings' relationship feels like it is solved but remains a fluid, incomprehensible thing, but I did not understand why Aruna would return to Patrick. The novel is spent describing how she uses him for comforting, unemotional sex, and then she suddenly wants to return to him? It would have made more sense if she had only returned to him with the hopes of resuming their old life, but the ending seemed to hint at them ending up truly happy -- how would that be possible?
    • 4/5
      'It's time to stop fighting and go home', the line Aruna finds in a book that draws her back to Singapore to try and sort out the life she left behind.Intertwining the story of the life she has made for herself in running away, and the twists of the life she left behind, Aruna and Jazz seek the truth - and to lay the past to rest.An interesting, at times heart-wrenching, read.
    • 3/5
      The book begins with Aruna walking out of her flat in London, and getting on a plane to Singapore to go home. At first, I liked her. I liked the idea of having the courage to get up and leave a situation you don't like. However, as the story developed, I liked her less, and I began to have misgivings about the story altogether. She wasn't acting out of courage or leaving a bad situation, and that was frustrating.Aruna is a young woman with bipolar disorder whose parents are dead. She is self-medicating with drugs, alcohol and sex, and is married to a nice British man. She is very confused. Also in the story is a lonely young man, Aruna's best friend and ex-boyfriend Jazz who also turns out to be a half-brother of some sort (one thing never clearly resolved in the story). Jazz's mother is dead and his father is dying of ALS (I think - never actually labeled as ALS, but all the symptoms are there).I have a family member with bipolar disorder, and my grandfather died of ALS, so until 3/4 of the way through the book, I was thinking I did not like it at all. It can be difficult to read books that reflect difficult things we've experienced.It's hard to say whether I think her going back to her nice English husband was a good or a bad thing. It's good to have someone who loves you, and it's better if you can love them back. I don't feel like we got to know him well enough. He's kind of a background character who turns out to be very important.When the author finally began to resolve all of her threads, I started feeling better. I really liked the ending (and I won't spoil it). Overall, despite the feelings stirred up by this story, I liked it.
    • 3/5
      It was an easy read despite three different settings and frequent flashbacks. I read this book at the time I was contemplating about bipolar disorder, love and sexuality. Book pretty much covered all three - though it was far from my state of mind - it made an impression on me as to how people deal with love and sexuality. It was an interesting insight into some of the most passionate/wilful people I identify with.
    • 4/5
      'It's time to stop fighting and go home'.I listened to the Audible version of this book, read, rather excessively slowly, by Tania Rodrigues. I think in this instance I'd have preferred to have read the book as I seemed to lose the thread from time to time and it's hard to check back with an audio version. This was especially the case as the relationship between Aruna and Jazz was unravelled.Aruna has been living in London, married to a doctor but still fighting addictions to drugs, alcohol and sex. She had lived for many years in Singapore but left suddenly when her relationship with her childhood friend, Jazz, came crashing to the ground. She suffers from bipolar disorder but is apathetic about the medication. In general, her life is a mess.The one stable thing is her marriage, until she suddenly walks out on it and buys a ticket on a plane back to Singapore.This move, prompted by the words from a poem that fall out of a book, 'It's time to stop fighting and go home', takes her back to face even more mess.Gradually we learn of the background to her first relationship, with Jazz, and why she had felt the need to escape. Jazz's father was once a poet but he is eldely now and is ending his days, lonely, in a Singapore hospital. It seems he holds the answer to the many questions that have confused Aruna for many years and driven her to hide behind her addictions.Aruna is really not at all likeable and I felt for the two men whom she had abandoned. There was no real satisfactory way to end this story once we had all the facts and I was frustrated with the decision that Aruna makes at the end.An author that I will read again, though not as an audiobook.3 1/2 stars.
    • 3/5
      As the cover blurb says, this is the story of a woman "finding herself"--but I have to disagree with the claim that it resembles The Namesake and Slumdog Millionaire. I loved both of those books, and there's no way this one has any connection to them, aside from the fact that the main character is Bengali and learns some family secrets. The main secret is, in fact, pretty far-fetched. (I'd tell you what it is, but I don't want to spoil the reading for anyone interested.) And Aruna, the main character, never really engaged my sympathy: she's moody, impulsive, and downright mean to those who love her. The author tries to explain this away by giving her bipolar disorder, but then Aruna refuses to take her medication, primarily because she LIKES being moody, impulsive, and mean.The narration shifts among three characters: Aruna; Jazz, the young man who has been her protector since they were 10 and the lover who she abandoned with no explanation; and Hassan, Jazz's estranged father, a poet who is wasting away in a hospital. I tend to like stories that have multiple narrators/POVs, as it gives greater insight into their hearts and minds, and Farooki does it well here. The setting jumps back and forth, from London to the Bengali community of Singapore to Kuala Lampur, and the novel jumps from preset to past just as erratically (which makes some sense as the characters reflect on their lives and try to unravel the big secret).As a reader with an interest in Indian culture, I was rather disappointed in Half Life, and I can only recommend it to others who enjoy angst-ridden novels of self-discovery.
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed reading this entertaining book. It is a poignant story of friendship and love. I loved all the characters especiallyHari who was totaly misunderstood by the person he loved best-his son. the characters were well rounded and I like the way the story was told from all their points of view.
    • 4/5
      Half Life follows Rooney, a thirty something Pakistani woman who was raised in Singapore but now lives in London. Rooney is in a marriage where she purposefully keeps herself emotionally unavailable, and self medicates with alcohol and drugs. Slowly, the author uncovers that Rooney's strange behavior is tied to her past in Singapore, where she was in love with Jazz, a man who turned out to be a lot closer than she thought. As Rooney unravels her past, she must come to terms with who she really is. Half Life was a hard book to get into, it did not grab me right away. But once Rooney leaves London and arrives in Singapore to settle up with her past, the book had me. The author does a wonderful job of slowly unfolding Rooney's history, with both flashbacks to her childhood, her earlier, happier life with Jazz, and her troubled marriage in London. The characters in Half Life are much deeper than the shallow people they seem upon first impression, and in the end their interactions really made me think about how hard it is to recover when your life is shattered. If you're a fan of literary fiction, this is a good book to check out.
    • 5/5
      "It's time to stop fighting, and go home," reads Aruna, so she walks out the front door, barely stopping to dress, put on shoes, and grab her purse. She heads immediately to the London airport and catches a flight to Singapore to face her past. There is a simplicity to the story and the style of this book. The writing is very lyrical, but it doesn't try to hard, instead the use of metaphor pulls you down into the room to sit beside each character as you read. She handles several challenging subjects, the kind of things that could jerk you out of the story with disgust in the hands of another writer. However, Farooki manages to approach the subject with a sense of loving forgiveness for her characters. She presents a world in which life is both brutal and beautiful, and even though perfect resolution is not always found, there is hope and the possibility of joy.
    • 4/5
      Just moments ago finished Half Life by Roopa Farooki, the story of young Aruna Ahmed Jones who, just days before her first wedding anniversary, walks out of the London flat she shares with her husband one morning with nothing but the clothes on her back, and her bag containing cell phone, credit card and passport and boards a plane to Singapore, returning to the life she had walked away from just as abruptly two years before. The story of that life and her reasons for leaving -- running away -- are told in alternating chapters focusng on the Aruna (also known as Rooney), her oldest friend and former lover, Jazz, and Jazz's dying father. And what a story it is! I really liked this book so much better than I thought I would as is evidenced by the fact that I gobbled the whole thing down this afternoon and evening. Simply but stunningly told this is a story I could recommend to just about anyone. ***1/2 stars.
    • 4/5
      "It's time to stop fighting and go home." After reading these words by a Bengali poet, Aruna Ahmed Jones decides to leave her husband Patrick and life in London to return to Singapore and her best friend Jazz.I don't want to give away too much of the plot - there are so many little surprising reveals throughout the book and it would ruin it to say much more. I was totally engrossed in this book from start to finish. Just when I thought I had a character or where the plot where the plot was going figured out, another layer unexpected layer was revealed. The author managed to do this in a very authentic way. The book goes back and forth from flashbacks to present day but is never confusing.This is Roopa Farooki's newest book and the first I've read by her. I'm looking forward to reading some of her earlier work now.(Thank you to the publisher and the FirstReads programs at GoodReads for providing me a copy of this book.)
    • 4/5
      Pain. I certainly felt pain for the main heroine of "Half Life". And for that - for making me feel that - credit goes to the writer. Roopa Farooki describes with poignancy the perils of being bipolar. And at the end, I felt relief - relief for at least the probability of the right direction Aruna's life might take. The other characters, besides Aruna, are no less complicated in their life stories, all intertwined in unexpected ways. I must say, I did feel some melodrama being enacted at times, but only to an extent. I got the book through LibraryThing Early Reviewers, and it really aroused my curiosity about the author, so that I already have on my desk her debut novel "Bitter Sweets" to be read at the earliest.--
    • 3/5
      I was prepared not to like this book simply because of the cover. As an Indian-American, I get irritated at the Indian lit books that have similar covers of a beautifully traditionally dressed Indian woman putting on jewelry or whatever. Also, the back cover says that it has "shades of Slumdog Millionare and The Namesake." Whatever. Marketing of non mainstream books is ridiculous. This has nothing to do with Slumdog or The Namesake. At any rate, once I got past my cranky prejudices, I read this book pretty quickly. Like most of the reviewers, I enjoyed Hari's character the best. Aruna was very frustrating but I understood that I was not really supposed to like her. I don't understand why she does go back to Patrick in the end--nothing in the book really made me think she liked to spend any time with him (apart from bed).I liked reading about the split of East and West Pakistan, and I don't think Aruna would really be happy in London, but in general, an engrossing, occasionally funny, and mostly well-written story.
    • 3/5
      I like how the book is sinuous; the transitions between the characters' points-of-view are smooth. Within those sections, however, the writing can get very choppy and inconsistent. Furthermore, although I feel like I understand the characters of Hari Hassan, Jazz, and even Zaida, I do not understand Rooney's motivations at all, and, by extension, any part of any other character's life that overlaps hers. She just seems to do things just to do them and there is no explanation as to why she behaves so deplorably aside from "it's the bipolar disorder!" People with bipolar disorder have motivations, just exaggerated ones.I enjoyed the conclusion to one of the plotlines but not the other. I like how the mystery about the siblings' relationship feels like it is solved but remains a fluid, incomprehensible thing, but I did not understand why Aruna would return to Patrick. The novel is spent describing how she uses him for comforting, unemotional sex, and then she suddenly wants to return to him? It would have made more sense if she had only returned to him with the hopes of resuming their old life, but the ending seemed to hint at them ending up truly happy -- how would that be possible?
    • 3/5
      This book starts promisingly. Aruna, a young PhD, reads a line from a poem and suddenly needs to abandon her husband in London and return to Singapore -- that very day. Through flashbacks, and skipping from one character's perspective to another -- all deftly handled -- Roopa Farooki sets out to answer many intriquing questions -- not the least: what is the matter with Aruna who seems to be addicted to everything (drugs, alchohol, cigarettes, sex) and only married her loving, doctor husband because, as she says, he asked her. Does she suffer because her mother died when Aruna was only three, because she loved her distant father, because of her long but mysteriously unsatisfying relationship with her childhood friend Jazz -- or has she some mental disorder?Along the way we receive a small dose of Indian and Pakistani history, and meet the most interesting person in the novel, Jazz's dying father. Unfortunately, the writing is uneven, sometimes lovely and flowing, but often abrupt, reading like the stage instructions in a play. In addition, about half way through we feel we've got the answers to all the questions (even though we don't quite) and what reason to go on? Aruna is not a sympathetic character; she treats her husband and Jazz terribly and there's no understanding why they put up with her, particularly the husband.The story wraps up neatly, not quite convincingly. The question lingers: does Aruna choose half a life?
    • 5/5
      This story changes settings and characters very often, yet I was never once confused over time, place, or character. Just as the story’s context changes rapidly, so too did my emotions. I felt like I was on an emotional roller coaster reading this book (in a good way)! I felt the characters’ joy and pain right along with them. I sympathized with Aruna even though I was also frustrated with her at times (at the same time, I would feel guilty for feeling angry at her because she suffers from a mental issue). The plot takes an unexpected turn at one point, and from then on, you are drawn in, trying to figure out what will happen next. You don’t know whether to cringe or to smile.Overall, I recommend it! It's well written, but still an easy read. I will definitely check out more books by Roopa Farooki.
    • 5/5
      I sat down with this book yesterday, intending to read just a few pages, and found myself unable to put it down. Though at first I was uncertain about Roooney and Jazz, as the novel progressed I grew to understand them and their unique and troubling situation. I thought the author's handling of the sensitive subject matter was masterful, and appreciated that she let the truth build slowly, revealing itself only gradually (both to the reader and to the main characters).The prose flowed freely, and did an excellent job of capturing the essence of the shifting locales. Both Rooney and Jazz grew emotionally throughout the novel, and I found the ending quite satisfying and realistic. This book was not what I expected, but quickly became more than I could have hoped. Highly recommended!
    • 3/5
      I got the AR copy yesterday and read it in one sitting. The story is like a weave of multicolored threads and it keeps going back forth in time and place but never loses the reader. The transition between places and time is very smooth. The characters in the story are Pakistanis and Bangladeshis and are very dense and complicated. I couldn't relate much to the main character though, nothing she did seemed 'normal' and she couldn't gain any sympathy or apathy from me as a reader. That said, Farooki, has made good use of words this time and I liked the style of writing. Won't ask anyone to run to buy it but if you get it....it's a good read.