For Half:
Reviews
Booklist STARRED review: “Fans of Jeffrey Eugenides, Andre Dubus III, and Jane Smiley will adore Harrigan’s suspenseful, lyrical, and consuming exploration of two difficult lives, intertwined.” The adjective ‘haunting’ can be overused to describe dynamic and poignant literary fiction, but it couldn’t be more fitting here. Raw and powerful, Half will stay with you.”
Publisher’s Weekly: “Harrigan’s bold stylistic choices and memorable voice lend the novel a sense of mystery and magic, well suited to the themes of childhood fears and adult disillusionment. Riveting and inventive, this is a cut above the average coming of age tale.”
Foreword Reviews: “Gripping . . . Harrigan’s novel will leave you eagerly turning pages to discover what happens next.” (Linda Thorlakson)
Named One of Best New Books, Booklist.
New York Journal of Books: “A riveting, inventive, quietly disconcerting page-turner” written “in an astonishingly effective first-person plural point of view.” (Kelly Fordon)
Barrelhouse: “Half is an aching and beautiful novel . . . the we point of view is a brilliant device.” (Elizabeth Gonzalez James)
Seattle Book Review: “Half is wildly creative in conception and engaging in execution.” (Shannon Carriger)
The Rupture: “Harrigan deftly complicates the easy binaries of good and evil, love and hate, innocence and guilt, engagement and estrangement. . . with deceptively spare prose.” (Hillary Moses Mohaupt)
American Book Review: “No small feat.” (Erin Davis)
“Half is mesmerizing, a bright and inventive novel like no other. I was swept away, pulled into the conspiracy that is twindom, with its exquisite sweetness and cruelty. The mystery that propels the story forward artfully reflects the mystery of twindom itself.”
—Bonnie Jo Campbell, author of Mothers Tell Your Daughters
“I love this novel. I couldn’t put it down. In its (nearly) collective narration by sisters, Half reminds me of Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Virgin Suicides, but the story is dazzling, startling, and fresh. Half proves irresistible page after lyrical page.”
—Jesse Lee Kercheval, author of Underground Women
“At turns remarkably lovely and frighteningly odd, Half, by Sharon Harrigan, is as sweet as it is creepy and strange. The story is told from the plural perspective of twins, reminiscent of Justin Torres’ We the Animals, with tension so organically built in that the very nature of the story, the style in which it’s told, lends itself to a troubling dynamic, like the twins themselves. Twice the threat at every turn, Half is lyrical, imaginative, and smart. A little novel pulling off a very big feat.”
—Deborah Reed, author of The Days When Birds Come Back
“Innovative and inventive, this novel does the impossible. It makes us believe two people can be so close they are virtually the same person. Harrigan’s magic trick is so convincing that when the twins lose their bond, we feel ourselves being broken in half too.”
—Bret Anthony Johnston, author of Corpus Christie and Remember Me Like This
Told in a singular voice using the first person plural, from the point of view of twins, no less, Half could have been too clever by half. But it’s a high-wire act of a novel, and manages to pull off the improbable. We feel for these twins, this We, and are enthralled by their unique story and by the cadence and humor and humanity of this daring, extraordinary novel.”
—Porter Shreve, author of The End of the Book
“Sharon Harrigan’s Half is the kind of story that lingers in the mind, haunting and unsettling, dark but redemptive, compelling in the way of the best fairy tales. I want to read it again and again to understand all of its rich layers.”
—Artis Henderson, author of Unremarried Widow
Interviews/Podcasts
Interview in Fiction Writers Review, conducted by Debra Jo Immergut.
Interview in Cleaver Magazine, conducted by Virginia Pye.
Interview on Michigan Public Radio.
Interview with Meredith Cole and Kristin Swenson on The Writer’s Story Podcast.
Interview on WMUK Kalamazoo Public Radio show “Art Beat” with Zinta Aistars.
Interview with Laura and Dave Medicus on Inside the Flap podcast.
A World Without Books podcast.
Interview with Kase Johnstun on LITerally podcast.
Profile in Charlottesville Daily Progress.
Interview by Leigh Camacho Rourks in Triquarterly Review.
Interview on Author2Author podcast with Bill Kenower.
Interview with Ilana Masad on The Other Stories podcast.
Interview with Marrie Stone on Writers on Writing podcast.
Interview with Cynthia Burnett on Thoughts from a Page podcast
Included in End-of-Year Review issue of Booklist’s starred (best) books of 2020
Interview with Yvette Benavides for Book Public show on Texas Public Radio.
Interview with Gabriela Pereira for DIY MFA.
Interview with Brad King for The Downtown Writers Jam.
Other Media Coverage
Cover reveal in Ravishly.
Essay in Literary Hub, We Should All Try Writing in the First Person Plural.
Playlist for Half in Largehearted Boy.
Post on University of Wisconsin blog, Be Careful What You Write About.
Book video for Half.
For Playing with Dynamite:
Praise & Reviews
Kirkus Reviews: “A warm, engaging read about the ways in which memory distorts our understanding of family.”
LitReactor: “The nature of memory, the mythology we create around our parents, love, marriage, and motherhood—Sharon Harrigan’s Playing with Dynamite is about all of these things, but also so much more. This is the kind of memoir that will increase your emotional IQ, making you smarter about your own life, and maybe even the familiar mystery of your own family.” (Susan DeFreitas)
Cleaver Magazine : “Her story—while just that, her story—is intoxicatingly relatable. Missed connections. Unasked questions. The desire to know our family, loved ones, and selves better. Her story is our story, too. And it’s a gift: through knowing hers, we can feel inspired to relearn who we are as well.” (Brian Burmeister)
San Francisco Book Reviews: “I earnestly recommend this excellently crafted personal history.” (Five out of five stars.) (David Lloyd Sutton)
Shannon Fox’s Isle of Books: “Beautifully written, engrossing, and artfully structured, it reminded me a lot of The Glass Castle.”
New Pages: “With renewed media interest these days in the concept of truth, now is the perfect time to read Playing with Dynamite.”
Midwest Book Review: “Playing with Dynamite: A Memoir is an extraordinary, exceptional, deftly crafted and multilayered account that will prove to be an enduringly popular addition to community and academic library Contemporary American Biography collections.”
Story Circle Review: “I recommend this five-star memoir as a must-read for anyone seeking an excellent story, as well as a study of the intricacies of memory and memoir.”
Literary Mama: “An engaging, complex book. . . It will appeal to readers drawn to stories about complicated family dynamics, and it might make you look at your own family through a new lens.”
Aquifer: The Florida Review Online: “If readers are lucky, they will find in a memoir, such as Sharon Harrigan’s Playing with Dynamite, a story that demonstrates that even an ordinary life proves interesting when assessed by an intelligent and skillful writer.”
Carolineleavittville: “Sharon Harrigan has written a thrilling memoir, PLAYING WITH DYNAMITE, about searching for the truth about her dad, a man who blew off his hand with dynamite before she was born and died in a very, very weird accident. Both about the danger–and relief–of finding the truth, it’s also a gorgeously written page-turner.”
“A daughter embarks on an odyssey to find her father, to find herself, and to find her way home. She is, by turns, both Telemachus and Odysseus, and her story is both epic and intimate.”—Nick Flynn, bestselling author of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City
“This memoir hit me in the gut and made me feel all kinds of complicated, lost in the wilderness of the human heart, but this much is clear: Sharon Harrigan writes with grace and unflinching honesty.”—Benjamin Percy, bestselling author of The Dead Lands
“Sharon Harrigan’s writing is frank and fiercely honest. Playing with Dynamite is a tremendously potent book.”—Debra Gwartney, award-winning author of Live Through This
Interviews & Excerpts
“Playing with Dynamite is about finding the courage to ask questions, to question memory and ultimately to question the stories we tell ourselves. As she writes in the book, ‘It’s harder to untell than tell a story.’ But this is what her memoir does. It pulls at the threads to unstitch a story she has told herself all of her life, and then stitches together a retelling.”
—Cville Weekly (see full interview here)
“Sharon Harrigan has written a thrilling memoir, PLAYING WITH DYNAMITE, about searching for the truth about her dad, a man who blew off his hand with dynamite before she was born and died in a very, very weird accident. Both about the danger–and relief–of finding the truth, it’s also a gorgeously written page-turner.”
—Caroline Leavitt, bestselling author of Cruel, Beautiful World (see full interview here)
“There are the stories we tell ourselves about our lives and the stories we discover if we’re brave enough to ask questions. This is the journey Sharon Harrigan takes in her memoir, Playing with Dynamite—a story about a daughter’s search for a missing father, a fractured family narrative, and the uncertain places within herself. Sharon’s descriptions are fresh and her language poetic. The book is filled with pithy reflections on the challenges of memory and her desire to excavate the blank spots in her own experience.”
—Lisa Ellison, Huffington Post (see full interview here)
“Playing With Dynamite pulled me in from the very first page.”
—Trudy Hale, Streetlight Magazine (see full interview here)
For interview in The Rumpus, click here.
For interview in Split Lip Magazine click here.
For interview on author Deborah Prum’s blog, click here.
For excerpt published in New York Times (Modern Love), click here.
For excerpt published in Lit Hub, click here.
For excerpt published in The Nervous Breakdown, click here.
For excerpt published in Streetlight, click here.
For related essay published in Real Simple, click here.
For “self-interview” published in The Nervous Breakdown, click here.
For interview on LITerally podcast, click here.)
Awards
International Book Award, First Place Memoir and Second Place, New Nonfiction
Sarton Women’s Book Award Finalist
Bookstore Staff Pick
“Playing with Dynamite is a really amazing and intense memoir about Harrigan’s father, who died in a tragic accident when she was seven. This quick description belies the fact that this book is so much more: part investigative journalism, part mystery, part literary history (Homer’s Odyssey plays heavily here), and a book not just about her father but about the author herself and her growth as a mother and a writer. I tore into this book and was blown away by it. Aside from being well written and deftly organized, it is a heartbreaking affirmation of family and love.”—Chop Suey Bookstore, Richmond, Virginia