Great novelists need alter egos to rationalize their lives. Updike had Rabbit, Roth had Zuckerman, and Naipaul has Willie Chandran.

This novel, the first of two Willie Chandran books cover’s the protagonists life until his early forties. It’s a novel about displacement and the quest to belong. Willie’s great grandfather left the protection of the temple to seek his life in the big city, a migration that was transformative, for he rose to prominence as a scribe in the employ of the maharajah of his state in India. Willie’s cowardly father went the other way, from courtier back to the ashram. It is for Willie to step up to the plate and find his place in the world and he ends up as a student in England, just like Naipaul did.

Willie’s desire to write gets him into bohemian circles in London where his first book of stories from his homeland is published. Yet, Willie is rootless, lacking in social graces and class. He is unable to date a woman and instead sleeps with his male friends’ girlfriends, as he already knows them and is able to approach them for larger “favours.” He gravitates to prostitutes until he falls in love with Ana, a Portuguese emigré. The book then takes a dramatic turn as Willie gives up his blossoming writing career in England to follow Ana to her home, a Portuguese colony in East Africa never mentioned by name, but which I took to be Mozambique.

The second half of the story in Africa is a told one for it is Willie now recounting his 18 years in that continent to his sister Sarojini whom he has returned to in Berlin. This part has a remarkable lack of dialogue. However Naipaul gets to expose the plight of the immigrant in this section. Just as Willie tried his damndest to become an Englishman in England and failed, the locals, who are African, half-breed or Arab, try their best to become Portuguese in his new home, for becoming like the ruling class confers the highest privileges. Naipaul describes the colonial farms run by the Portuguese gentry very well, right from the furniture to the lifestyle, to the side deals they do to amass money. Ana gets the legitimacy to run her farm with Willie as her man of the house, although he is even more rootless than in England, and very soon takes up with prostitutes, again. History repeats when he is rescued from the emotionless whores by falling in lust with Graḉa, Ana’s friend married to a drunk. The existence of this colonial society that was formed after the first world war is at risk due to the encroaching guerilla war, fermented by dissent, foreign support, and inequality. And when the transference of power happens, Willie lives through the breakdown of systems, estate take-overs, scarcities, and the transition to everyone becoming poor. But like much of Africa today, the locals who gain power then start fighting among themselves, snapping Willie’s last straw, making him flee, not only Africa and Ana, but his own wasted and deprived life. He accuses Ana, “I’ve been living your life for eighteen years, not mine.” Then why the heck did he go to Africa? That question is never quite answered, although race riots occurred in Notting Hill at the time.

Like I found with the second of the Willie Chandran novels, Magic Seeds, that I read a few years ago, Naipaul seems to be losing his novelistic edge at this point of his career, although this book has a bit more legs to it than the sequel does. He seems to be more interested in exposing the social, political and psychological impacts of immigration via a thinly veiled story, than in the story itself. There were gaps in the narrative in places, for instance I didn’t know that Willie and Perdita (another of Willie’s London friend’s girlfriends) had lit a spark, I didn’t know he had given one of his prostitutes half a week’s wages—had an eager editor cut these bits out, or had Naipaul forgotten to write them in?

That this is an incomplete novel requiring a sequel is obvious, for Willie is no more resolved at the end than when we first meet him. However, given my disappointment in the sequel, I wondered why Naipaul bothered to create this alter-ego. Naipaul was a far more interesting character in himself, and books like Sir Vidia’s Shadow do better justice and shed far more light on this enigmatic writer. I think Naipaul would have been well placed to have written about the real world, using his insightful observational and narrative powers to make sense of it for us, rather than to examine his complex life via Willie Chandran.

This one had lived on my shelves for far too long. I'm glad I finally read it - was pleasantly surprised that I liked it so much :)

This is my first Naipaul and I wan't sure quite what to expect. What I got was a layered narrative, textured characters and fine language. This is a short book, just over 220 pages but boy does it pack a punch! I like family sagas, and although this one is a physically short read, it is no less, epic in scope.

We follow Willie Chandran, a mixed-caste boy from India who grapples with issues of identity, belonging, family, values, friendship and love amongst others, as he grows up first, in a recently Independent India and then in London and Africa. I identified strongly with Willie - with his meandering approach to life, never truly settling down to one thing or one place; a seeker, an explorer but not quite a settler. As Willie tests the waters, he is inevitably drawn toward stronger characters. In their company he becomes more confident and assertive, drawing from these same qualities in them, if only for short periods of time before his inherent, natural malaise returns.

For me, the concept of 'half a life' represents Willie's struggle to find his identity, and his place in the world. He doesn't fit neatly into any box and so floats from one place to the next, one friend to the next, one thought to the next - with no heed to permanence. Naipaul's prose is a beautiful balance between incisive and philosophical. His characters tend to think, often overthink and yet he never feels repetitive, never over writes!

Half a Life is a treasury of 'full circle' moments. Naipaul brings these to fruition with formidable skill. The parallels between characters are envisioned with insight and authenticity. He is indeed a raconteur par excellence and I enjoyed my first dip into his considerable body of work. None of the intimidating density of award winning authors here. Just a fine story, wonderfully told :)

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Willie Chandran is an outsider from birth, apart from everyone and everything in his life wherever he is. His alienation comes partly from the circumstances of his birth to an unhappy couple, but also choices he makes no matter where he goes. Somewhat aimless, he never really launches, and as he looks back over his life, the only real growth he shows is in carnal knowledge.

What Naipaul intended with this story is hard to determine. It ends abruptly and leaves much unresolved. But in the middle section in London, an acquaintance and almost friend of Willie’s tells him that stories usually have a beginning, middle and end, and suggests to Willie he vary from that when he attempts to write fiction. Maybe that’s what Naipaul was doing, making it harder than normal to read his tale and force us to figure things out for ourselves (maybe not giving us an ending at all). Perhaps the title tells us the protagonist was only living his life half way and to not expect too much.

The writing is good and matches the apartness of the protagonist, keeping us at a distance with his judgments and harsh, negative opinions of others. Just unsatisfying at the end. Not a dud, but one expects more from a Nobel Laureate.
3 1/2 stars.

One more thing: Willie’s middle name is Somerset after Maugham (a writer I’ve always liked), who entered Willie’s father’s life at an awkward moment and unwittingly changed it after writing The Razor’s Edge. This intersection of East and West was one of the more interesting little interludes.

I found this book to be different yet refreshing. I thoroughly enjoyed it. However, I can see how others find it boring or uninteresting as it is all internal dialogue of a father/son’s perspective on their life stories. It was different as it took place throughout India, London then Africa. I liked the historical element of the 1930s-1950s!

A child called Willie asks his father about his second name. Somerset. Turns out he was indeed named after Maugham. The father had met Maugham when he was in India. This is how the book starts and I liked it. Later on Maugham answers to letters written to him but apparently without understanding what they wanted from him. We are in the 50s and Maugham was quite old.

Young Willie makes it to London where he will study like his father did. The first part of the book is the story of the father really and quite boring, but much better than the second and third part about Willie.

The writing of the book is okay but the story, as far as there is one, made me feel uncomfortable. This might be what the author intended, I do not know. And I will not hold the fact that he got a Noble prize against him. (But now that I brought it up, I expect from an exceptional author either brilliance or stuff that I cannot understand. This I can understand and I dislike it.)

At the beginning there are a couple of little stories that are mildly interesting, we learn just a tiny bit about the different casts in India, but this is not what the book is about. It is about one of the most unsympathetic characters I ever encountered. Not because he is evil but because he is shallow. The only thing he is interested in is sex and his ability to perform. He sleeps with the girl friend of his friends. Then there is a prostitute then he meets an African lady. He follows her to some country in Africa. Where he stays for 18 years. Then he goes to Berlin, we are now in part 3 where he tells the African story to his sister. It seems at least for a time he found his satisfactions by sleeping with children. Which is told in a matter-of-fact style that maybe is supposed to shock us readers. But I am not sure. What Naipaul intended I have no clue. I am just happy that we are spared the other half of his life. And I know for sure that I will give this writer not a second chance.

This didn't make much of an impression on me –I expected more. The most compelling bit is the story of Willie’s father, not so much of Willie himself. Willie’s father is a man who goes along with the flow of things because he is remarkably mediocre, below average perhaps. Trying to break the tedium and prove himself worthy, he makes a ‘noble’ decision to marry outside his caste, a decision which turns out to be all talk and no substance because he isn’t able to, nor does he genuinely try to, rid himself of deep rooted biases. Through a weird set of circumstances, he turns into a somewhat revered sadhu, who comes into contact with Somerset Maugham (and vaguely names his son after him), and ends up in various accounts of spiritual India etc. I liked this bit because it took a jab at such stereotypical accounts, which you could still find very easily in a bookstore. I liked that it questions authenticity.

The rest is a typical jaunt around the colonies, trying to fit in, feeling like the ‘other’ etc.

"If you are not used to governments or the law or society or even history being on your side, then you have to believe in your luck or your star will die."

Contrary to all that hype about how amazing the book was, I found it okay. It is a story about an Indian man whose father marries a low caste woman and as a result is ostracized from the society. As the father tells the story about how he married a low caste woman as a sign of sacrifice, young Willie, the son listens to him with great distaste and gradually begins to hate him. As the story unfolds, Naipaul tells us how Willie goes to England and later at Africa.
The story progresses fast and is exciting in the beginning with lots of promise. You can never imagine what happens next and the "matter-of-fact" language of Naipaul makes it enthralling. However as Willie grows older, the voice is lethargic and even though the language is simple, I wished the book to end soon for the story started getting boring.
Perhaps I didn't like the book because I didn't like the protagonist. I wanted him to be different from his father, motivated, having the zest to live life. However, he lacks vigor, motivation and is purposeless. In the end however, the protagonist seems to have finally woken up and initiated himself to start yet another "Half of his life" but by that time, I got too bored.

The Difficulty of Self-Knowledge

Naipaul's novel "Half a Life" plays upon the ambiguity of its title in several ways. " In the most obvious sense, the book tells the story of "half a life" because it covers the life of its protagonist, Willie Somerset Chandran, up to the age of 41. (Slightly more than half the human lifespan of threescore and ten). At the end of the book, the reader is left to wonder about the manner in which Willie's subsequent life will develop.

In another sense, the novel tells the story of "half a life" in terms of quality rather than quantity (length of life). Willie leads only half a fully-developed human life in the book because of his frustration, for sexual as well as other reasons, and lack of purpose. Just as Willie comes to realize, the reader comes to realize as well the empty character of Willie's life.

Perhaps another sense in which the novel tells the story of "half a life" is that the author does not reveal Willie's full story. We learn about his frustrated ambitions, his family, his travels, and something of his sexuality. The book seems to suggest that there is more to the character, both within him and without him, than the author tells us.

A final sense in which the book tells of "half a life" lies in its autobiographical character. The book seems to be based in part on Naipaul's own life. But it does so by taking details from an actual lived life and scrambling them up and changing them through imagination, just in the way that Willie in the novel uses movie plots to create his volume of short stories. For example in the book Willie is born in India, goes to college in England as a scholarship student, and then lives in Mozambique. Naipaul was born in Trinidad, went to England as a scholarship student, and has written much about India.

All these possible meanings to the term "half a life" focus on Willie's lack of self-knowledge and his difficulty in attaining it. Willie seems the constant outsider. He is never comfortable with himself of where he is. He has no real plan or purpose for himself. In the book, he learns that he is a writer of promise and produces a good first volume of short stories. But he doesn't follow-up and instead leads a drifting life in Mozambique for 18 years. Equally important, Willie is sexually frustrated and, as he stresses, sexually ignorant. Willie's sexual frustration has its beginning in the India of his boyhood and in the unhappy relationship between his parents. It continues through his college years in London where he has sexual relationships with his friends' girlfriends and with prostitutes. And in Mozambique he continues his relationships with young African prostitutes and with the wives of acquaintances.

The book is in three large sections which describe Willie's life in India, his life as a student in London, and his years in Mozambique. I was greatly drawn into the first two parts of the book, particularly the middle section describing Willie's student days in London. The third lengthy section describing Willie's life in Mozambique in the final years of colonial rule falls off markedly.

This is a tough-minded book about its protagonist's inability to come to terms with himself, to find a goal in life he can pursue and a full human sexual relationship. It suggests the many ways in which people are limited, through their own choices or through their circumstances, to living "half a life".

Robin Friedman

I borrowed this book from a friend and it has been on my shelf for 6 months now. I read it today and I am now very thankful because Sruthi gave me the opportunity to read this book. The author was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature 2001 and I am not sure if I would ever have discovered this author if it hadn't been for her. I was so captivated be the whole story and the authors way of writing so I absolutely have to read more of his books!!

Naipaul is one of my favorite authors, but this particular novel was dismal. Now I understand why it was for sale for $1. in Sydney, where even paperback books go for $25. Half A Life started with promise, but went nowhere -- I am not at all clear on what the lot or even point of the story was, unless it was to say how aimless life is, and it wasn't even clear who the protagonist was. The thing is Naipaul's style is so simple, that he really needs the structure of plot and solid character development to carry his work. This just doesn't have enough of it. My biggest question is, why did I even finish this one?