Customer Reviews

Breakable You

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This poignant novel is at heart an unusual love story, albeit peopled with a cast of eccentric characters who are constantly redefining their most intimate relationships within the world they inhabit. The crux of the novel is clearly articulated by the author: "You're forging your own character during every minute of every day, with every decision you make." Profoundly moral without being judgmental, the juxtaposition of three family members, Adam Weller, his ex-wife, Eleanor and their daughter, Maud, set the stage for Maud's life-changing encounter with Samir, a Palestinian she meets through mutual friends. Adam, a semi-successful novelist in his sixties, reclaims his youth through a relationship with a much younger woman, while Eleanor, a psychologist, struggles with the pain of a bitter divorce, trapped in the role of discarded wife.

Meanwhile Maud, a philosophy teacher working on her dissertation, is content with her books and her thoughts, until she meets Samir, a quiet, taciturn Arab-American to whom she is immediately attracted in spite of his apparent lack of interest. Their first date is a failure until Samir does something so unexpected that Maud intuits his true nature and dedicates herself to opening up his heart, releasing the painfully trapped person within. Through her persistence, the once-emotionally fragile Maud reveals a generosity of spirit and inquisitive nature that is extraordinary, constantly surprising the reader with her tenacity and compassion. The enigmatic Samir is a wonder, after all. Meanwhile, Maud's parents are distinguished by their personal responses to the opportunities that arise, Adam drawn toward duplicity, while Eleanor embraces the long-unexplored potential of her forgotten dreams.

This novel is extraordinary on many levels, most heartrending and inspiring the love that blooms between Maud and Samir, with all that relationship implies. But the author unfailingly dissects the other characters with an astonishing and unerring ease, revealing the flawed yearnings and hidden aspiration behind the outward façade of daily life. From the profound observations of humankind to the excruciatingly painful wounds carried in secret, Breakable You is a remarkable exploration of the true meaning of love, loss and the moral compromises that betray the soul. Luan Gaines/2006.

Author Brian Morton returns to New York, a setting he painted to perfection in A Window Across The River (2003 ). Once again his characters are fully realized, passionate, funny, and flawed, perhaps microcosms of ourselves.

Adam Weller is 63 years old, a novelist, and some may say hectored, others may say encouraged by his younger ambitious mistress, Thea. She's new to the City and the ways of it. Incredibly beautiful she's a former high school beauty queen and Miss Junior Wyoming. Now working as an assistant producer for Charlie Rose, she likes to call Adam by his last name because "she thought it made her sound cynical and worldly like Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not." However, what Adam needs is a bestseller, not reminders that he's a has been.

His former wife, Eleanor, suffers from his rejection, although she was aware of his previous affairs she had not expected him to leave. Adam had left "because of the explosive combination of Thea and viagra." Although she's a psychologist, Eleanor is overweight and resentful, initially spurning the approach of the first man she loved and left for Adam.

Maud, Adam and Eleanor's daughter, is a rather fey spirit who is deeply immersed in her studies of philosophy. She suffers from depression and seems committed to the life of a student until she meets Samir, an Arab American, with whom she begins a torrid affair.

Fate has a way of intervening in Adam's life when the promising manuscript of a late colleague comes into his hands. The man was his mentor and friend yet Adam takes the manuscript as his own.

The intermeshed lives of these people provide the plot lines in this remarkable novel, subtly crafted, unforgettably wise.

- Gail Cooke

A sensitive exploration of who we are and how we love, Breakable You focuses on three members of a family who no longer understand (or in most cases, care) what it means to be a family. All have made independent choices in their pursuit of life and career, and they now have little in common and few avenues of communication. As Morton, a particularly intimate writer, reveals his characters' hopes, fears, strengths, and weaknesses, the reader comes to understand them and, in most cases, empathize with them.

Adam Weller, a sixty-year-old author who has achieved moderate success, has divorced his wife of thirty years to pursue a twenty-something beauty while trying to write a book which he hopes will restart his literary career. The least likable character in the novel, ego-driven Adam is so self-involved that there seems to be little hope for any self-enlightenment. His eventual publication of "the best book of his career" is based on a shocking dishonesty.

His former wife Eleanor, a psychologist, is an "earth mother" who gave up her own goals to help her husband pursue his. Now alone and working as a counselor, she is trying to put her life back together, but she is not sure if she herself needs counseling to deal with her emotional difficulties. Daughter Maud, a Ph.D. candidate who is still trying to finish her dissertation in philosophy, has been hospitalized twice for emotional breakdowns and has only a fragile grasp on everyday reality. Now engaged in a passionate affair with Samir, Maud believes she has found love. Samir, however, has not recovered from the long illness and death of his three-year-old daughter, and he is having difficulty opening himself to new life.

Alternating points of view among his characters, Morton explores the universal subjects of love, life, and death, but his characters--serious thinkers all--are unique, and their interpretations of how one develops a life, what love means, the responsibilities it entails, and how one copes with death and dying are also unique. As the Wellers' pasts impinge on the present, their emotions and desires affect their ability to think. Their problem-solving abilities vary from Adam's ruthless pragmatism to Maud's paralyzing philosophical introspection, and happiness, we discover, is not a function of how thoughtful, or honest, or unselfish one might be. The action moves along smartly, and Morton's imagery allows the reader to form pictures of the physical world as well as the characters' intellectual and emotional lives. n Mary Whipple

I enjoyed reading this book and thinking about the characters. I found them interesting and instructive, although none were particularly likable.

For me, the major point of interest was the moral compass of patriarch Adam Weller. He could be the poster boy for moral relativism gone bad. The narcissistic way he conducts his life and relationships, and the decisions that he makes regarding his significant others show the huge impact of a personality like his.

His ex-wife and daughter are the walking wounded. His childhood friend and mentor suffers the worst fate (to be revealed upon reading the book!) How Weller rationalizes and implements his decisions make for a great read and much food for thought.

I recommend this book.

Yet again the cliche of an attractive older man leaving his wife for a much younger woman plays out in this "morality tale" . I found nothing remotely likeable about the character of author Adam Weller. While he's hardly a murderer or the type of villian who deliberately plots to make other people miserable, he's so self-absorbed that it's difficult to be interested in him, because he's so self-interested. His girlfriend Thea is hardly sophisticated enough to be "Lady MacBeth" material, although she'd certainly like to believe she does possess that degree of sophistication. And of course to be blatantly trite, we must have the ex-wife as crusading martyr, as Eleanor is depicted. Maud, their daughter, in her final year or so of graduate school, endures the most throughout the book, but even that is glossed over in some kind of way. While it's refreshing to read a novel whose heroine is open and unapologetic about her sexual yearnings and practices, her physical relationship "accidentally" brings her closer to Samir, depicted as the love of her life. As beautiful, intelligent and compassionate as Maud is, at the end of the book I really wondered how she and her infant son will fare as she's recently recovered from the third nervous breakdown of her adult life at 30. The one sentence in the book I felt absolutely true had to do with grief as a catalyst of change within a person, but 368 pages are a lot of pages to wade through in order to find one pure sentence.

I loved it and didn't want to stop reading. There is real heartbreak here but also redemption in every day acts of survival. It is a New York book, the city a recognizable force in character's lives.
Spend a weekend immersed and you won't regret it. Morton's language will welcome you to his world.

Reviewed by Dawn R. McKinney

Adam Weller is an author--something of a success, but the brass ring has always been just a little past his fingertips. He is not a nice person. He is an opportunist, a user and a taker.

Weller leaves his wife of many years for a much younger woman. Said young woman promptly lets him know that she is of the opinion that he is all used up. His talent has abandoned him and he is just a shell of his former self.

Adam feels that he has to find a way to redeem himself in his own mind. So, in the middle of dealing with a very resentful ex-wife, who eventually comes into her own, and a daughter who is extremely overdrawn emotionally, he makes a discovery.

What he does with it, will define who he is. One decision will save his soul and keep him a sane man. The other will put him on a bullet train to Faust's house.

Wonderfully written and extremely insightful, Breakable You takes you on a journey into the dark psyche that gives new credence to the age-old questions," How far will you go?" and " How far is too far?"

Armchair Interviews says: Decisions, decisions.

I read the book and felt as though it read well, intelligently. However, throughout the whole book the only thing that inspired me to turn the page was the hope of peace and especially justice. I left this book feeling unsatisfied and disheartened.

Morton stays quite close to home in "Breakable You," speaking about a clichéd environment that even he portrays as dying.

I was surprised at the flat simplicity of the author's language and his "Gee, whiz!" treatment of book learning -- both seem to need the seasoning of more experience and reflection.

It was also awkward to watch Morton make such substantial efforts to build suspense in sub-plots that only become more obvious the harder he tried.

One moment at the novel's close did show some grit, however: Morton judged well in leaving without comment his portrayal of the father's, Adam's, hilarious cluelessness in not only not knowing he was being insulted in the hospital waiting room but in taking the insults as validation of his vulgarity. After misfiring with saccharine so often, Morton scored with brutality in this passage.

I read through this book in one day. I appreciated the author's
skill with creating a plot and characters with whom we can identify.
I will purchase more books from this author.