The New York Times Book Review, “Editors Choice”, January 16, 2011

“Like her mother, Sexton can create a startling intimacy with her readers. She comes before us emotionally naked, explaining the pull of self-cutting and suicide in a tone that’s unsettling direct…This book looks into the workings of the suicidal mind in a way that isn’t easily forgotten, raising provocative questions about how we approach and treat the severely mentally ill. Sexton paints suicide as a deadly disease mechanism: only the care of other people can save its victims, but those victims become experts at driving other people away. ‘The bare bones fact,’ Sexton writes from her own grueling experience, ‘is that no one wants to deal with a suicide.’”
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

“To forge one’s own life free of a parent’s shadow is a challenge for any child, but when that child was born to renowned poet Anne Sexton, who committed suicide in 1974, the challenge takes on a particularly dark dimension. For Sexton, the shadow hides emotional turmoil and a legacy of mental illness passed generation to generation; despite determination to break the chain, Linda acknowledges passing it to her sons as well. With extraordinary transparency, the author intimately recalls her relationship with her unstable mother, who preened her daughter as an extension of herself before finally abandoning her. Sexton even includes an honest confession of the guilt she felt in succumbing to the legacy passed from her mother rather than ending it. The array of deep emotions here make it impossible not to sympathize with the author, and perhaps her raw account will leave the reader with an alternate legacy: the knowledge of the sometimes suicidal pain of mental illnesses and the love and care needed to overcome it. Sexton’s second memoir is a valuable examination of a dark and complicated subject.”
PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY, STARRED REVIEW

#1 Elle Magazine’s Belle Lettres Pick, February 2011

Elle Magazine: “Most readers found this midlife memoir by the daughter of poet Anne Sexton to be an eloquent and engrossing account of how the author battled her mother’s legacy of self-destruction.” Our readers say:

“A compelling memoir about the legacy of suicide and depression…beautifully written.”

“Powerful, honest and disturbing. Half in Love gracefully explores depression and suicide from inside the eye of the storm.”

“Terrifying, harrowing and strangely intriguing. Her honesty demonstrates her bravery in facing her mental illness…the beauty of her writing makes this a very readable memoir.”

“Sexton’s writing is filled with beautiful passages…but she never romanticizes suicide and she ultimately triumphs, using her words to save herself and to spare others from surrendering to the abyss.”

“In this stark, affecting memoir, Sexton picks up where she left off in her 1994 tell-all Searching for Mercy Street…with a compelling candidness…in the end, we’re rewarded not by Sexton’s inevitable listing toward harm but by her resilience in the face of it.”
SAN FRANCISCO MAGAZINE

“Linda Sexton’s beautiful book is a cry for health and sanity. It will bring hope and understanding because it explains the way suicide blights families from generation to generation.”
ERICA JONG, AUTHOR OF FEAR OF FLYING AND SEDUCING THE DEMON

“Half in Love is a gripping account of the legacy left by a mother’s suicide and an eloquent testament to a daughter’s struggle to wrench herself free of the damage left in the wake of turmoil. Linda Sexton’s determination to forge an identity independent of suicide and destruction is powerful; her book is a vivid and inspiring story of living through despair and coming out the stronger for it.”
KAY REDFIELD JAMISON, AUTHOR OF AN UNQUIET MIND AND NIGHT FALLS FAST AND PROFESSOR OF PSYCHIATRY, JOHN HOPKINS SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

“Linda Sexton is one hell of a brave writer. In her memoir, she takes us on a harrowing journey, to the edge of death and then beyond, to a new, safe place. She’s now able to tell her story about the entanglement with her mother’s legacy—“half in love with easeful death.” It’s a story that will reach deep into many reader’s hearts. She makes the telling of this tale an act of grace, of art, of redemption.”
ELLEN SUSSMAN, AUTHOR OF ON A
NIGHT LIKE THIS AND FRENCH LESSONS

“Once again, Sexton has pulled off something truly remarkable—in prose that is both graceful and raw she crafts powerful scenes that vibrate with authenticity. I cannot recall a more riveting description of a nearly lethal suicide attempt. The suspense leaps off the pages, pages which the reader is now turning furiously. Also powerful is her deep understanding of how suicide permanently impacts the family through multiple generations and her descriptions of self-stigmatization, which, by the way, belong in mental health curricula.”
DR. FREDERICK K. GOODWIN, M.D.; PROFESSOR OF PSYCHIATRY, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY; FORMER DIRECTOR OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF MENTAL HEALTH

“Having affectingly grappled with the demons that led to her mother’s suicide in Searching for Mercy Street (1994), Sexton takes on her own in this stinging chronicle of a road to three attempted suicides. An elucidating, caustic engagement with the author’s depression.”
KIRKUS REVIEWS

“This is Linda’s gift, to explain what a state of mind most people have never experienced is really like…The level of detail in the story Linda tells about her struggled will make it harder for readers to dismiss the idea that there can be a legacy of suicide, and easier to see where help might be available and maybe how it can be most effective.”
NECROMANCY NEVER PAYS

“The author’s brave and intensely compelling of Half in Love: Surviving the Legacy of Suicide will offer hope and helps to others facing a similar situation. For those fortunate enough not having to deal firsthand with mental illness, maybe it give a better understanding and willingness for support. And to those readers who simply desire a truly brilliant book written—without pity—by a gifted author whose mind conquered all, this memoir is for you!”
THE DIVINING WAND

Linda’s memoir is intensely personal and emotional, and when I was done reading, I almost felt like I wanted to give her a hug. She shares her battle with depression and certain things she talks about are heart-wrenching. Her pain comes right off the pages. I was curious to read Linda’s memoir because I wanted to hear her take on suicide and depression. She shares her story here in a brave and insightful way. Half in Love: Surviving the Legacy of Suicide is a moving and beautifully written memoir that is not to be missed.
THE BOOKWORM

“Linda Sexton eventually achieved what her mother could not, an escape from the riptide of depression. She’s still learning to take unambiguous satisfaction from that.”
THE BOSTON GLOBE

“Heartfelt and forthright… this memoir is conciliatory, and fortunately for us, ultimately hopeful… Sexton’s shame and helplessness give way eventually and admirably to redemption and forgiveness.”
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

“A welcome personal look at the specter that haunts many families, in which a parent’s suicide can threaten the mental health of descendants.”
BOOKLIST

Sexton’s journey through the romance of necromancy– the book takes its title from Keat’s famous invocation, “I have been half in love with easeful Death/Called him soft names in many a mused rhyme’’ –is painful, but rewarding. It’s not exactly beach reading, but it’s not self-indulgent, either, unless you truly believe mental illness, even when it’s a genetic predisposition, is a failure of character(… she has been) scrupulously delicate, and respectful in handling this emotional material.”
OBIT MAGAZINE

“In her new memoir, Linda Sexton completes the circle opened up with her stunning memoir, Searching for Mercy Street—but this time, the woman whose torment she explores is not her mother, but herself, and where her mother’s story ended with despair, hers is one of survival. With brutal honesty and total lack of self-pity or sentimentality, Linda Sexton has dared to explore a subject more taboo than almost any other: not only suicide, but what comes after, for its survivors. This is a book that will speak to anyone touched by the suicide of someone we knew or loved—as so many of us have been.”
JOYCE MAYNARD, AUTHOR OF AT HOME IN THE WORLD AND TO DIE FOR

“This is an exquisitely crafted story that needs to be told: how depression and suicide can be passed down the generations. The most loving, committed mother can suffer such intense pain that all reason is blacked out and death seems the only answer. Linda Sexton is unsparing in her honesty and unfailing in her eloquence as she takes us from the descent into hell to the miracle of recovery. After a siege of courting death, she comes to fall wholly in love with life.”
SARA DAVIDSON, AUTHOR OF LEAP! AND LOOSE CHANGE

“Half In Love is a testament to the potentially mortal wounds that suicide inflicts upon the living. Linda Gray Sexton has transformed her emotional suffering into a memoir of stunning intimacy. Wise, insightful, and unflinchingly honest, Sexton mines the depths of the darkest despair and ultimately her own salvation. This is a masterful work, beautifully written, by a brave soul of remarkable talent.”
JAMES BROWN, AUTHOR OF L.A. DIARIES AND THIS RIVER

“In this book, Linda is very open, and very courageously tells her story in the hopes of helping others … I was drawn to this book and her story and I found her writing to be so beautiful. I can’t imagine what all she has been through and I have such tremendous respect for her to be so open and to pour everything out the way that she has in order to try to help others.
THE BOOK TRIB AND BOOK CLUB CLASSICS

I very highly recommend this book. The writing is fabulous. Linda so intimately opens herself up in order to reach out and offer hope to others who have been touched by suicide and depression. She offers her story of healing and recovery. I have been so moved by reading this book that I would love to get a hold of her other previous books as well! She is an amazing writer and an amazing person.”
LIFE IN REVIEW

“Sexton holds nothing back in her book. The memories she shares are honest and painful. Her insights into what her mother was going through must come from her own struggles, but she describes them so poetically. It makes the book a beautifully disturbing read…[Half in Love] is so important because it shines a light on a subject that is still taboo. By sharing the most private moments of her and her family’s life she gives voice to something that needs to be heard, to be examined, to be understood.”
BOARDING IN MY FORTIES

“Powerful, honest, and disturbing, Half in Love gracefully explores depression and suicide from inside the eye of the storm.
GOOD READS