Half a Life is a great memoir of a terrible accident. On the first page, Darin Strauss tells us that, as a teenager, he killed a girl.

It was an accident, clearly. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time, driving the car that just happened to be where the girl veered her bicycle.

It was a horrible, horrible situation that most people will never find themselves in. So Strauss and his family were constantly faced with the question of what to do and how to behave, and we get to be the looky-loos.

In the immediate aftermath, Strauss spent much emotional currency dealing with those who are “for” and “against” him. The lawsuit filed against him by the dead girl’s family was sad on so many levels, and emblematic of a need to “make someone pay” – even if money can never truly compensate. The lawsuit was settled before the case went to trial, and although Strauss and his legal team were sure that they would prevail, Strauss regretted that no third party would ever render an independent verdict of his innocence.

Writing about the accident and its effect on his life was a form of therapy for Strauss. (I don’t want to use the sappy word “closure.”) He unflinchingly tells us things that he could have kept hidden; how he coped, with awkwardness and withdrawal, highlights the honesty of his story.