The Bowl Is Already Broken: A Novel [Hardcover]

Mary Kay Zuravleff (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 10, 2005

A big, rewarding novel about art, politics, family, terrorism, courage, and happiness.

Promise Whittaker, the diminutive but decisive acting director of the National Museum of Asian Art, is pregnant again--and that's just the beginning of her difficulties. Her mentor, the previous director, suddenly walked away from his job with no explanation, and now is on a dig somewhere in the Taklamakan desert. Her favorite curator has dropped their newest treasure, a bowl once owned by Thomas Jefferson, during the ceremony celebrating its acquisition. Another colleague, desperate for a son, has been embezzling from the museum to pay for her fertility treatments. And her far too handsome, far too elusive ancillary director is clearly up to no good.
Confronting challenge after challenge at work and at home, Promise is one of the most offbeat, original, winning characters in recent fiction. The Bowl Is Already Broken is all brains, all soul, and all heart--brimming with ideas, provocative, and deeply satisfying.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Former Smithsonian editor Zuravleff's logy second novel (after The Frequency of Souls) tracks the mishaps and hard-won triumphs of the staff of a little museum that could, Washington, D.C.'s fictitious Museum of Asian Art. The novel opens on diminutive Promise Whittaker, the acting director, watching the museum's curator of Chinese ceramics drop a priceless Jingdezhen porcelain bowl at the prize acquisition's unveiling ceremony. Backtrack six months: Promise, a 43-year-old, Oklahoma-bred Rumi scholar and devoted wife and mother of two, is as floored by her promotion to interim director as she is by her unexpected pregnancy. Then director Joseph Lattimore, yearning to join a dig in the Taklamakan Desert, is threatened with the museum's extinction unless he brings in significant funding. Meanwhile, the curator of ancient Chinese art, Min Chen, embezzles museum funds to cover fertility treatments. As Joseph is eased into involuntary retirement, Promise injects some much needed energy into the museum's operations, all while maintaining an implausibly ideal home life. Though the plot ranges from shenanigans in D.C. to adventures in Central Asia, it bogs down in art historical detail where it should skip briskly. The shattered bowl becomes a metaphor of Buddhist wisdom, a lesson in patience and fortitude that one can also learn from tireless mothers like Promise. (Apr.)

From Booklist

Promise is having a bad summer. She is unexpectedly and uncomfortably pregnant with her third child. Her affable, activist husband smokes too much pot. Her house is falling apart. Her babysitter is trying to indoctrinate her already neurotic children. To top it all off, Promise has just been named acting director of the Museum of Asian Art, a museum the administration is trying to close. When her best friend, and fellow curator, breaks a porcelain bowl once owned by Thomas Jefferson, it may be the end of all of them, or their saving grace. This enjoyable novel touches on subjects from Asian art and philosophy to cancer and infertility. Although there are a few too many subplots involving characters the author doesn't have time to flesh out, Promise Whittaker is so realistically written she makes those around her look good. Marta Segal
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (March 10, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374115710
• ISBN-13: 978-0374115715
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.1 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,161,701 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I didn't want it to end, April 28, 2005

By 

WG (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Bowl Is Already Broken: A Novel (Hardcover)

I have a friend who will only allow himself to read one page a night when he's down to the last 15 pages of a really good book. I never could understand this practice before I read "The Bowl Is Already Broken." But, I confess, I couldn't do it. I greedily devoured every word.

Each character revels in and is held prisoner by his or her own obsessions. Even though the characters exist in the microcosm of museum life, this book is such a full story in the world. While revealing the inner workings of a museum, the author also unravels the stories of objects; the meaning expressed in the fabulous decorations of Chinese porcelains as well as their cultural and historical significance. But these descriptions are intertwined with the action, and add significantly to the depth of the characters and the plot. So, when the former director takes off on an archaeological expedition in central Asia, the worlds of art and politics collide. The politics work so well precisely because the author avoids being dull or preachy. This is a clever novel full of beauty and wit.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Behind the scenes at the museum, April 12, 2005

By 

Candace "thepageturner" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Bowl Is Already Broken: A Novel (Hardcover)

You'll never look at a museum the same way after enjoying Mary Kay Zuraleff's frisky second novel about "the least-visited museum on the Mall"-the fictitious National Museum of Asian Art in Washington, DC. The novel opens with pomp and splendor, as dignitaries and international celebs gather at the opening of an exhibit called "All Fired Up!" which is supposed to win the institution much needed-funding via the splashy presentation of a priceless Chinese porcelain bowl to the museum. But, oops!, the little bowl takes a fatal bounce down the entire front stairway, thanks not to some clumsy oaf of a guest, but to the museum's own curator of Chinese ceramics who for some reason decided to pick the thing up. What's an acting museum director to do?

That's one of the challenges facing Promise Whittaker, a tiny, brilliant scholar who looks and sounds like an eighth-grader, but whose common sense has put her in this fix. Promise would much rather be researching her beloved poet Rumi than being responsible for trying to attract enough funding to keep the museum open. Her mentor has suddenly decamped to join a dig in an especially remote desert. Her colleagues are up to all sorts of mischief, and oh, she's pregnant again at 42.

Zuraleff is a former staff member at the Smithsonian, and you get a great idea about what goes on behind the scenes in putting an exhibit together. There is neatly presented information about Rumi and different areas of Asian art. You even find out what to do if you are taken hostage by terrorists, thanks to Promise's husband, who works for Amnesty International.

Yet even with the wealth of characters (my favorite is the curator of ancient Chinese art who is looting her travel fund to pay for fertility treatments), "The Bowl is Already Broken" -like poor Promise-starts to tangle its own feet. The hostage-taking episode, despite that useful escape information, is not really very gripping, and you are left wondering what several of the characters were actually up to.

Nevertheless, Zuraleff's novel is quirky and readable enough to keep you going if you can flutter lightly over some of the stumbles. Where else can you find a compendium of famous museums' worst disasters? And who hasn't wanted to work at a museum? I suspect her first novel is worth checking out, too.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful!, August 29, 2005

By 

Carol Beehler (Bethesda, MD) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Bowl Is Already Broken: A Novel (Hardcover)

I am a longstanding fan of Mary Kay Zuravleff's writing. I loved her wonderfully inventive first book, The Frequency of Souls, and her current novel also does not disappoint. This is a book to savor and take your time with, for The Bowl Was Already Broken is original, witty, warm-hearted, and also full of the most interesting and amazing information. Zuravleff writes about the art world in a way that is at once curatorial, sensitive, and hysterically funny. Her depiction of family life and happiness will warm your soul. The characters in this novel are like quirky friends, and when I finished the book, I found that I cared about them and felt as if I wanted to know what was going to happen to them beyond the last page. Have you ever felt a bit sad that you were getting close to the end of a book? That's the way I felt about this book--I was sad to finish it--an indication of how much I enjoyed reading The Bowl Was Already Broken.