Publishing Parts of Life

After series of acclaimed memoirs about personal struggles, Tufts graduate Brendan Halpin is testing his hand at fiction.

Boston [09.17.04] For the first time, Brendan Halpin is writing about someone else’s life. Following two critically-acclaimed memoirs that offered poignant, raw and powerful insights into his personal experiences, Halpin tried his hand at something new: fiction. With “Donorboy,” the Tufts graduate weaves an imagined tale that retains all of the human emotion of his first two books.

“Halpin’s great gift as a writer is to hold his reader’s heart in two worlds simultaneously – one achingly funny, the other heartbreakingly sad,” author Alison McGhee told Random House, describing “Donorboy.

The book – which tells the story of an orphaned 14-year-old girl who goes to live with her sperm donor father after a tragic accident killed her two mothers – hit bookstores in August.

“Told entirely through email, instant messaging, journal entries and other random communications, “Donorboy” is the comic, compellingly readable novel of how these two people learn to converse, cook, write heavy-metal songs, and nail windows shut on their way to becoming a family,” reported Random House.

The book has many of the emotional highs and lows that defined Halpin’s first two memoirs.

His first – “It Takes a Worried Man” – was created from a journal he kept when his wife, Kirsten, was diagnosed with breast cancer and had chemotherapy treatments.

“I had to do it. I had to do it in order to stay sane, or at least as close to sane as I could,” the Tufts graduate told National Public Radio. “The stuff just poured out of me.”

Halpin never intended for his story to be published. According to Cincinnati City Beat, the writer gave a copy of his journal to some close friends who sent it to a literary agent. The agent wanted to publish it and Halpin agreed in order to give readers a chance to see a man’s side of coping with breast cancer.

The memoir was as powerful as it was honest.

“Where [Halpin] really packs a punch is in saying the unsayable, and for this he must be applauded,” reported London’s The Times.

The New York Times agreed.

“Halpin wrote with impossible spark and astonishment about the roller-coaster experience of coming to grips with his wife’s cancer diagnosis and treatment,” reported the Times. “[He has a] gift for turning a memoir into an antidote to misery. It’s a writing lesson well worth learning.”

Learning, as it turned out, was the very subject Halpin tackled in his second memoir.

“Losing My Faculties” – written about the daily struggles he faced as a teacher surrounded by passionless educators and endless bureaucracy – maintained the emotional honesty of his first book.

In what The Arizona Republic calls “an irreverent, heartbreaking, dumbfondingly funny book about love, fear and perseverance,” Halpin struggles vainly with himself to confront the high school administration each time around.

“I’m standing here watching the dream of a school in which teachers make important decisions dying in front of my eyes,” he writes. “But is it worth it?”

Like everything else Halpin has done, the answer is yes.