Half Broken Things Book

Winner of a prestigious Crime Writers' Association Dagger Award, Half Broken Things is quite the most impressive novel yet from a writer whose work (Funeral Music, Fearful Symmetry) has combined total narrative command with a laser-like psychological penetration. The central themes of Half Broken Things are twofold: the fragility of the shell of reality that hides deeper truths, and the destructive hold of the past over the present. Jean Wade has made her living housesitting, when (in her 60s) she loses her job. But discovering the keys to the locked cupboards and secrets of her current home, the spacious Walden Manor, she is able to assume ownership. And then begins a strange transformation: Jean starts to alter things in the Manor, while acquiring a surrogate family: Michael and Steph have, like Jean, not made a success of their lives, and the sanctuary the trio create is built upon an extrapolated--and illusory--past. But the happiness they enjoy proves to be transitory, when dark secrets from the past begin to tear the thread of their day-to-day existence. And the grim resolution of their liaison all too quickly comes upon them, as their past actions come destructively back. The level of insight into the hidden recesses of the human mind is as assured here as in any "literary" novel, and such masters of this kind of narrative (in the non-crime field) as William Trevor are both evoked and matched in achievement. Jean, in particular, is a brilliantly realised character, and Half Broken Things is a novel that deserves all the accolades that have been thrown its way. --Barry ForshawRead More