Half Life

Nora and Blanche are cojoined twins. Nora, the stronger of the two, longs for romance and excitement, while Blanche has been sleeping for close to thirty years. Tired of carrying her sister around, Nora travels to London to find the Unity Foundation, an organization that claims it can merge the pair into a single person.

Once in London, Nora's buried past begins to rise to the surface and pulls her into a reluctant journey through memory. Her search for meaning and understanding pushes her close to madness.

The novel is strange, bawdy and funny, told with striking inventiveness. It is Shelley Jackson's debut novel, and it portrays two lives sharing one divided body with both dark humor and tenderness.