Halfway Heaven - Hardcover

Thernstrom, Melanie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385487452 ISBN 13: 9780385487450

Publisher: Doubleday, 1997

Synopsis

A few days before the end of spring term, an anonymous note arrived at The Harvard Crimson.  It contained a photograph of a student and a typed message: "Keep this picture.  There will soon be a very juicy story involving this woman."  Now, the critically acclaimed author of The Dead Girl reveals the never-before-told story of two girls--one from Ethiopia, the other from Vietnam--for whom admission to Harvard was like "halfway heaven," the stepping stone to the American Dream that would ensure success for them and their families; and how they met instead with the darkest of all fates: a tragedy that might have been prevented.

Based on Melanie Thernstrom's article in The New Yorker, here is the complete story of an unfathomable murder/suicide that shocked the country--and a groundbreaking exposÚ of one of America's most distinguished universities.  Drawing on the astonishing diaries kept by the murderer, Thernstrom reconstructs the inner life of a deeply troubled girl, struggling against isolation and depression, uncannily self-aware, and desperate for help.  Sifting through layers of responsibility and silence, Thernstrom has pieced together a story that points back to Harvard and its calculated efforts to whitewash the story, and to protect and promote its distinguished reputation at the cost of its own student body.

A work of dazzling investigative journalism and literary pathos, Halfway Heaven raises profound questions about the nature of attachment, obsession, female friendship, and the power of loneliness to transform love into destruction.

About this title

Review

Harvard prides itself on being a melting pot: the student body is 19 percent Asian, 7 percent foreigners, and more than one-third of all of the students are minorities. So when a junior from Ethiopia, Sinedu Tadesse, stabbed her roommate 45 times and then hung herself, the university came under immediate scrutiny from the press. Melanie Thernstrom approaches this tragedy with the sensitivity of someone who cares about Harvard, as an alumna and daughter of a professor, and she engages the reader with an unassuming, personal style. In the end, Halfway Heaven presents a disturbing picture of how a small, prestigious community can neglect its mentally-ill members. As quotations from Sinedu's diaries reflect all too clearly, what it takes to do well in school does not necessarily build a healthy psyche: "When I am with one person, I shake with nervousness fearing that we will run out of things to say and she or he will be bored. For math I had a teacher; for painting I had a teacher; for social life I had no one."

Also recommended is Thernstrom's first book, The Dead Girl.

From the Publisher

Praise for Melanie Thernstrom:

Halfway Heaven:

"A book of rare, illuminating depth... Melanie Thernstrom once again demonstrates a great, shattering gift for writing about forgotten people."
--Mikal Gilmore, author of Shot in the Heart

"Halfway Heaven takes us deep into the twin Harvards--the seemingly cozy world of the insider...and the terrifyingly lonely one of the outsider."
--Stewart O'Nan, author of The Speed Queen and The Names of the Dead

"Fascinating...this book is a wake-up call to American universities everywhere."
--Susan Power, author of The Grass Dancer

"Like Hannah Arendt, Melanie Thernstrom here beautifully explores the etiology of evil."
--Lauren Slater, clinical psychologist and author of Welcome to My Country

The Dead Girl:

"Eloquent...a notable model of the female Bildungsroman."
--Helen Vendler, New York Review of Books

"The Dead Girl is groundbreaking, new and startling, and will surely have a long life in literature."
--Harold Brodkey

About this edition

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0385487452
• ISBN 13: 9780385487450
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224