Noel, Katharine

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Noel, Katharine

PERSONAL: Married Eric Puchner (a writer and teacher); children: one daughter. Education: Graduate study at Stanford University's creative writing program.

ADDRESSES: Home—San Francisco, CA. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Atlantic Monthly Press, 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003. E-mail—katharine.noel@stanford.edu; katharine_noel@yahoo.com.

CAREER: Stanford University, Stanford, CA, creative writing lecturer. Has also worked at Gould Farm (residential program for the mentally ill), Monterey, MA, 1992–94, and for four years at a shelter for homeless women and children.

AWARDS, HONORS: Wallace Stegner and Truman Capote fellowships, Stanford University, 2000–02; Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award, 2003.

WRITINGS:

Halfway House (novel), Atlantic Monthly Press (New York, NY), 2006.

A chapter of Halfway House appeared in Best New American Voices 2003.

WORK IN PROGRESS: A novel.

SIDELIGHTS: Katharine Noel's first novel, Halfway House, details an accomplished teenage girl's mental collapse and recovery, along with her illness's impact on her intellectual, upper-middle-class New England family. Angie Voorster, a star in both academics and athletics at her high school, has a psychotic breakdown during a swim meet, in which she dives to the bottom of the pool and tries to stay under. Diagnosed with manic-depressive disorder, she undergoes treatment in various hospitals and a halfway house over the next few years. Meanwhile, her mother has an extramarital affair, her father turns to recreational drug use and other means of escape, and her younger brother grows into a man who cares deeply about his sister but cannot always cope with her. Noel, who has worked with mentally ill people, portrays Angie's recovery process as long and difficult, with the possibility that her illness has subdued her spirit permanently.

Several reviewers praised this depiction as true to life. The passages in which Angie's illness flares up are "realistic enough to make the reader cringe," noted Deborah Donovan in Booklist. "Noel writes Angie's manic episodes with a harrowing immediacy," added New York Times Book Review critic Taylor Antrim, "but even better, she captures the fragility of her saner moments." In a similar vein, Library Journal contributor Jenn B. Stidham observed that the story is "told with a rare and honest sympathy." Jennifer Reese, writing in Entertainment Weekly, found Noel's subject matter a bit stereotypical. The bookstores are full of "family-in-crisis melodramas," she remarked, though she also deemed Halfway House an "engrossing debut" featuring "thoughtful characterizations and graceful prose." Antrim described the novel as a "sure-footed" effort overall, while Donovan summed it up as "potent, informative, and compassionate."