5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"The prison of solitude", July 31, 2005
A dysfunctional family in denial, the thin line between social acceptance and the taint of poverty and a lack of personal boundaries between brother and sister, mother and son; everything factors into this disturbing coming-of-age tale, all the more painful for its immutability. For years Ginx and Morgan-Lee have lived in a world of their own making, where affection for one another is unquestioned and without boundaries, creating a place of comfort and seclusion. Ginx suffers from a form of autism, functional enough to attend high school, but still given to withdrawal and ritualistic behavior. In the summer of Morgan-Lee's fourteenth birthday, subtle shifts have already opened a shallow breech between brother and sister.
With a mother too distracted to care for Morgan-Lee, Ginx and their sister, Dana, the children create their own landscape. This is the summer of Morgan-Lee's search for identity, defined by her own needs and wants, rather than the sheltering of Ginx's fragile ego. Morgan-Lee has literally belonged to her fifteen-year old brother, their youth a patchwork of imaginary fables and shared secrets, but she is a survivor who subconsciously acknowledges that she can never provide all that her brother needs.
Morgan-Lee has long flirted with romantic attachments, but it is not until the children socialize with a very strange young woman, Sweety-Boy, and her half-brother, Jacob, new to their part of North Carolina, that their careful surface develops fissures, threatening to change their relationship irrevocably. The three children are isolated from their peers, Morgan-Lee gladly shepherding Ginx through his emotional difficulties, but when the siblings attend an intimate birthday party thrown by Sweety-Boy, the status quo is altered by the drunken exposure of naked needs blooming in the humid summer air.
In some ways, Sweety-Boy's world-weary cynicism acts as a catalyst for Morgan-Lee, a role model for accomplishing goals; on the other hand, Morgan-Lee is perplexed by the other girl's actions, mistaking her stubbornness for confidence. Prematurely worldly, Sweety-Boy is conscious of her own currency in a stingy world, while, in contrast, Morgan-Lee is still wrapped in innocence, her desire for the opposite sex deepening, but she remains incapable of reading the signs around her, grappling with unfamiliar emotions, knowing the price will be the loss of her brother and the solace they offer each other. Ginx, Morgan-Lee and Dana are thrown into unexpected betrayals. The most keenly observant of the three, Morgan-Lee recognizes the storm on the horizon, helpless to change the inevitable, "the prison of solitude that so often kept people together, no matter how unhappily, was constructed out of pure, empty yearning".
Against a southern gothic background, Morgan-Lee, her brother and sister play out their fates, all of them branded by a lack of emotional support and affection, the suggestion of forbidden intimacies and the chaotic behavior of a family desperately clinging a hope of normalcy. Many scenes are wracked with the painful awkwardness of adolescence and the yearning for love, the carefully constructed walls of their house of cards all but destroyed by Morgan-Lee's impulsive lurch into her own identity. Written in deceptively simple prose, Broken as Things Are is both disturbing and poignant, the protagonists victims of the harsh realities of life. Luan Gaines/2005.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Poetic language, unforgettable characters, August 9, 2004
This review is from: Broken as Things Are: A Novel (Hardcover)
Reading this book is like finding hidden treasure. The relationship between Morgan Lee and Gynx is like no other that I've read, and the language is amazing. I'm so glad I bought the book. It's by far the best book I've read this summer.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
If you love beautiful prose, read this., September 5, 2004
This review is from: Broken as Things Are: A Novel (Hardcover)
Wonderfully strange and original coming-of-age story of a young Southern girl too attached to her autistic brother whose maturity is chronicled in her power with words. The novel soars, but I also loved its hilariously droll tone throughout while the narrator pokes fun at her family,the town's seediness and its "legends".
The narrator and the brother relishing the sounds of language to describe the tone of their emotional environs is such an original gift to the reader. It's so refreshing to read a literary, coming-of-age novel that does not rely on self-conscious irony, cultural references or smirking world-weariness and to find an author that has such command of her prose; the prose just shimmers. The book really transports you to a world you could never imagine on your own.
Glad I stumbled upon this book.
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