A treasure trove of lost family photos illuminates a singular perspective on family, memory, and history in this hypnotically enjoyable memoir. When Judith Kitchen came across boxes of family photos in her mother's closet, the discovery sparked curiosity and speculation. Over a ten-year period, Kitchen worked on Half in Shade, trying to come to terms with an inherited collection of family memorabilia that enlightened as much as it confused. . . . Most compelling is her attempt to find out the things she does not know but suspects about her mother, including an unexpected romance. Piecing together her memories with the physical evidence in the photos, Kitchen explores the gray areas between the present and the past, family and self, certainty and uncertainty. The result is part memoir, part speculation, part essay. Half in Shade is a lyrical, ennobling anatomy of a heritage and a family; of mother-daughter relationships, and recovery from illness. It is a voyage of memory that captures with precision the forces of the heart and mind when none of us knows what lies beyond the moment, outside the frame.
"Judith Kitchen has written a book that is at once clear and accessible and at the same time insistently complex. Her effortlessly constructed hybrids make Half in Shade part memoir, part speculation, part essay, a demonstration of the interactive art of seeing, and finally for me, a beautifully sustained meditation. It is at that meditative level that the book's potent, unsentimental emotive powe
Stuart Dybek
"Kitchen's book lets you know what a keen eye coupled with an alert and sensitive intelligence can see."
Publishers Weekly
"Kitchen's collaboration with the past serves as a reminder that we of the twenty-first century are neither the first nor the last to know heartbreak. Rather, we are simply one more snapshot in the collage of humanity-half-blurry proof that none of us are ever truly forgotten."
