Rating: 
Summary: Life and love in the shadow of colonialism
Review: "Half a Life," by V.S. Naipaul, tells the story of Willie Chandran, born to a priestly caste father and a lower caste woman in India. The novel follows its conflicted protagonist to England and to a Portuguese colony in Africa; along the way we see both his romantic/sexual strivings and his efforts to express himself as a writer.This book offers a fascinating glimpse at the disintegration of colonial regimes in India and Africa. This is a novel with a truly global span; Naipaul creates an intriguing group of characters and interrelationships. There are a number of characters whose relationships or backgrounds reflect the crossing of lines of caste, color, and/or ethnicity. The story is nicely enhanced by Naipaul's straightforward prose style. It's a tale of love, rebellion, loss, regret, and the quest for identity.
Rating:
Summary: Well written, but depressing
Review: As usual, Mr. Naipaul has written a highly readable book. I did miss the beauty of the Trinidad dialect that is sometimes in his books, but this story of a young man from India who goes to England and then Africa, remaking himself, is strangely intriguing. I cannot say that I liked the main character as a person -- I don't understand his motivation -- but still, the book is worth reading. I am hoping that the sequel will make all clear to me.
Rating:
Summary: Half Better Than None
Review: Disgruntled pundits have taken to calling Naipaul's latest "Half a Novel", and it is a criticism not without justification. There is certainly a feeling of the book ending abruptly and without a satisfying resolution. Still half a Naipaul is better than most authors in their entirety. His simple language and syntax, almost Hemingwayesque in its declaration but vastly more elegant, makes this a deceptively easy read, but beware. There are layers of meaning throughout in his subtle characterizations and descriptions of place and customs; Naipaul's cooly ironic style sometimes keeps them hidden. The irony is thick enough to be cut with a blade. The title certainly refers to the main character, Willie Chadran, who feels, by age forty-one, that his best years are behind him, never to be recovered, and that he has wasted his life in desultory pursuits of sex and literary fame. But he is not the only character not living life to its fullest. Others fritter theirs away chasing material possessions and political power and social mobility. An air of doom pervades the novel generally, a sense of impending chaos, an end to life as these characters know it, and by the time the book ends there are indeed signs of destruction, departure, and change. All these folks can do is run away from the ephemera of their own artificial lives, their illusions. Not great Naipaul but compelling throughout and probably better than anything else around at the moment.
Rating:
Summary: More like a 1/3 of a life though quite good
Review: Half a life is at times extremely compelling. Other times I found myself rushing a bit to get to better parts. And still other times I had to go back and take a look again to see what I missed only to find I hadn't missed anything but was required to fill in some blanks. The problem is not the language. It is clean and clear unaffected prose and quite Naipaulian. The problem if it can be called a problem is that it's a short book. Perhaps in some way it seems too short. The character of Willie Chandran starts off as if he is to be developed in such a way as to make him grow before our eyes but he rather "jumps" through the periods of time instead of growing. The story of his father and his prejudices and suffering and the early life of Willie in London becoming both writer and sexual novitiate are by far excellent pieces that probably could stand on their own as short stories. Naipaul foreshortens the novel by skipping over a lot of Africa and only gets the story to us via Willie telling it to his sister also in somewhat of a foreshortened manner. Naipaul's narrator dwells mainly on his sexual growth which in fact I enjoyed reading with prurient interest. I did long for a bit more dialogue instead of narration. But this seems more like Naiapaul's style than choice. Naipaul, however, does develop a tale about an outsider and provides us with some psychological insight into inauthenticity. And the outsider, no matter what his/her race or class or caste and the place that he/she exists or country of origin, still feels like the outsider, still feels fraudulent and any sense of self-satisfaction or a feeling of belonging is always precarious and an indication that a fall is just around the corner. I don't think even years of shrinking could help this character. (BTW I'm not a shrink) The fact that such social realities are easier to highlight in a period of time set during colonial domination and upheaval and races and classes are clearly understood social phenomena is the writer's choice and no doubt due to his experiences. I kept thinking while I was reading that this type of drama could be transported to a contemporary American setting, though not as easily, where we all live half lives if not largely inauthentic ones.
Rating: 
Summary: get a life and pass on half a life.
Review: I expected this book to be much better written. The author dwells on the obvious. The struggle for the protagonist to grow beyond his very limited background is only touched upon in a limited way. The writing is not intelligent or clever. The characters are flat. The historical background is superficial and leaves the reader wanting to know more about the historical setting and timeline. At best, this should have been a short story.
Rating: 
Summary: Deciphering Naipaul
Review: I've read two books by V.S. Naipaul: Miguel Street and Half a Life. He has a raw, direct style that you rarely find in modern authors that tend to be more polished and antiseptic. His style is similar to that of Caribbean newspapers, which is unsurprising because both he and his father wrote for newspapers in Trinidad. There is a lot of discussion of Naipaul because it's very difficult to decipher what he is writing about. That his books are autobiographical is clear enough in that the main character follows a path similar to that of Naipaul's actual life. What isn't discussed as much is his emphasis on race and social class and its impact on the main character. What this book is really about is the profound alienation of the main character. He cannot find a place for himself in the world. In fact, the book ends this way, with him telling his wife that he had lived her life long enough and now it is time to live his own. Again, this may be a reflection of the author's own experience having immigrated to England from Trinidad, being both inside and outside of a culture.
Rating:
Summary: A Good Place to Start
Review: Naipul is now one of my favorite writers and Half a Life was his first book that I read. I recommend it highly
Rating:
Summary: Yuck
Review: Since some of the reviewers here covered the book better than I could, these are just some of my thoughts on the first book by VS Naipaul that I've read.
"Half a Life" follows the life and travels of Willie, born and raised in India by a family of mixed caste background. Throughout his years as a young man Willie often refers to his mother as "unclean" and the marriage of his parents as both a negative violation of tradition and at the same time, a rebellious symbol of shrugging off that tradition. This paradox remains throughout the book, the theme of in a society with set ways and then the abrupt change in Willie's life, the societies' lives or both. The story ranges all over, from India (a colony on the verge of independence) to London (the heart of empire) to a Portuguese colony in Africa which is in the process of becoming independent as Willie remains there.
Willie changes location, friendships and lovers with little emotional investment, coming off as selfish and a bit cruel, leaving places and people behind when he no longer feels its worth the effort of maintaining the relationship. While this is a good metaphor for colonialism, all of this also leaves the reader with the urge to stay clear of this kind of "rootless" and rather soulless living by the final pages.
The most interesting part of this book is that, like a good record, at first it feels like nothing special. But after you've finished it, you'll find that you can't stop thinking about it. To me, this is the sign of a good novel.
Rating:
Summary: get a life and pass on half a life.
Review: This book knocked me out. Many people seem to have a problem with what they regard as an emotional distance or cold tone. I think Naipal's point was to dissect, with peerless analytical style, the consequences we all must face in coming to deal with our "inheritence". Naipal's narrator, Willie (and Willie's father, also), sadly illustrate the unfulfillment of not coming to terms with the basic facts of one's birth: social, economic, familial. For example, Willie's father, born into a comfortable caste from which he sees no possiblity of transcendence, pridefully chooses to make of his life "a sacrifice." Is resignation a form of transcendence? Doubtful, as Naipal mercilessly shows the man's essential folly and basic weakness. Similarly, Naipal masterly shows how Willie's "inheritance" of his Indian ethnicity (something obviously unearned) plays a part in permitting him, for a while, to become a relatively successful writer. When his talent is tapped he embarks on a marriage and a lazy, listless life on a colonial plantation in Africa. Perhaps this decision doensn't appear so curious when one considers Willie has never experienced such wealth. We understand how our own cultural inheritance infulueces the decisions we make, oftentimes without our awareness. Or perhaps we willingly turn a blind eye to our own motivations. Naipal chooses a detached, analytical style to show us the folly of such ignorance. This book is so economical, the prose so clean, conveying such powerful ideas with such awesome clarity in so few pages. Like I said, it's brilliant- read it and think.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: V.S. Naipaul is a literary craftsman. His sensitive depiction of Willie's HONEST perspective in this sordid world WE live in is brilliant. He spares no detail, and is as brutally honest with his reader as he always is. Fantastic!
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