The Break

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The Break is a barren field on an isolated strip of land outside the home of Stella a young Métis mother. One evening Stella looks out of her window and spots someone in trouble on the Break ― she calls the police to alert them to a possible crime. When I first saw The Break at the bookstore it caught my interest but I decided against it as it had a trigger warning for violence. I can be sensitive to violence however knowing in advance it does take some of the sensitivity away. I saw it again at the library and knew then that I was going to have to read it. It was definitely a good read for me. I felt that Katherena Vermette handled the violence well and is so well written that I didn't feel sensitive towards it at all.

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She seems surprised. ‘If your husband is “on a break” from your marriage’ – she does the quotation marks with her fingers – ‘then aren’t you’ – more quotation marks – ‘“on a break” too?’ The other thing is that I really wanted resolution with his parents and to some degree I wanted his name cleared as far as all that stuff in the hospital (not trying to do the spoiler thing, here). The themes of pain, abuse, trauma and the stories & fear that we are forced to carry as women and people of colour were very well explored and the language (despite the constant repetition of the word 'gross' which bugged me slightly) was beautiful, simple and poetic. There are compelling characters - Phoenix & Tommy especially - complex, rich, heartbreaking - but many of the others including Stella, Lou, Paul & Cheryl, were significantly less well-developed and in the end, all sounded very similar and stereotypical so that I was unable to form any attachment or even really care about them. And I just didn't think she needed the POV from a dead woman - although these were some of the most beautifully written passages, they distracted me and constantly pulled me out of the story.

Personalities

This a book about family. Jonah has a brother, Jesse, who is allergic to pretty much everything. Regular trips to the emergency room kind of allergic. Good chance of dying young kind of allergic. His parents weren’t coping so well with it before, and they’re coping even less now there’s a new baby in the house. It doesn’t help that milk is among the many, many, many things Jesse is allergic to, and with a new baby there’s a lot more of it around. It’s a family on the edge of breaking, (that point between broken and unbroken is a running theme through this aptly titled novel) and Jonah is doing everything he can to hold it together. On that note, I was relieved to read about characters who actually sounded their age, and not like a thirty-five-year-old trapped in a seventeen-year-old's body. I bought this book and Invicible Summer at the same by Hannah but I wanted to read this one first. The concept really caught my attention. As someone whose broken a few too many bones in her lifetime...I know the pain that comes with it. I could never ever imagine doing it to myself on purpose, so I was intrigued. I'm glad Jonas didn't get through breaking all the bones he was planning on breaking. I don't know if I could've lived through reading that lol. The skateboarding 'accident' to him throwing himself into a 14 foot deep pool that had been drained to smashing 8 of his toes with a hammer...just imagining that while reading made me shutter.

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And below the surface of the story, shared memories and metaphors link their two minds, as MacLaverty shows how decades of intimacy work to mingle consciousnesses as well as experience, and yet how far we remain unknowable to each other. In some ways the novel is a study in perspective, as the pair move between intimacy and distance. Authored by a senior in high school, this debut novel would make a veteran author proud. Jonah worries about a lot. He worries about his parents, worries about the fact his baby brother cries all the time, but most of all he worries about his younger brother, Jessie, who is severe and life-threatening allergies. After being hurt in a car accident, Jonah has started trying to break every bone in his body to make himself stronger. He is helped by his best friend, Naomi, who films him breaking his bones. As Jonah moves deeper and deeper into pain and breaking, the question is who is worrying enough about Jonah to help him.The Rihanna kind? You’ve got to be joking me, because Rihanna is – what? – twenty-two and you’re –’ WOW. This was the first book I've read of Hannah Moskowitz's and it did NOT disappoint. Break was an easy read and it also (rather rudely) enjoyed toying with my feelings. And I liked the actual idea for the book. I think it was great and I think it could have really been great.