“Luminous, sad, funny and affecting... Half a Life is animated by reminiscences that are so emotionally detailed, so physically well observed that they burn an image in the reader’s memory, like paintings glimpsed at an exhibition.” ~ Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

“Half a Life is a frank and spunky memoir... perfectly riveting.” ~ Entertainment Weekly

“Beautifully written . . . a modern day Huck Finn Story” ~ Vanity Fair

“Stealing happiness, by any means necessary, is the subject of Half a Life. It is the memoir of a Bad Girl who refused to have a bad end. But it borrows nothing from the pastel racks of ‘personal triumph over adversity ‘ tales. Instead, it whispers in a deceptively casual, even comic, vividly disturbing but seductive voice that, just maybe, the only change for anyone born behind the eight ball of life is to cheat” ~ The Nation

“ found myself devouring Half a Life with the same surreptitious pleasure I had in reading Catcher in the Rye under the bedcovers of my suburban youth.” ~ Amy Tan

“Surprising and inspiring... Full of unspoken love.” ~ Mirabella

“Jill Ciment’s book strikes the right note from the beginning and never loses it. This is how contemporary memoir ought to be written: with humor, poetry, insight, emotion, and no whining” ~ Phillip Lopate

“Reading Half a Life feels like sitting down to dinner with someone you really like. It gets late, you have to work in the morning, yet the intimacy is so intense, the story so compelling, that instead of going home you say,“And what happened then?” Ciment writes with absolute compassion... full of humor, generosity, and amazing tenacity... nothing sort of heroic.” ~ Los Angeles Times