Customer Reviews

Broken as Things Are: A Novel

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I bought this book based on all the great reviews and was very disappointed. I personally don't see what all the excitement is about. The author doesn't expand on the characters enough to make you care what happens to them or why they are doing the weird things they do. The book is just unbelievable and odd.

Morgan-Lee is a 14-year old North Carolina girl who is a writer of love letters for fellow students, though she's never needed one herself. Morgan-Lee doesn't fit in. She is growing up in a difficult family and is having a hard time of it.

Her older brother, amazingly handsome Ginx, has a form of autism and though he can talk to others on occasion, he prefers to speak in a language of words based on sound and tone that only he and Morgan-Lee can understand. Increasing their exclusive bond are the stories that Morgan-Lee makes up for Ginx. The characters in her imaginary stories sometimes acts out the otherwise hidden sexual tension between the siblings.

With a mother who is too self-absorbed to contribute much help to Morgan Lee's growing up, she relies on her aunt Lois whose career in beauty and cosmetic make-overs underlines her overwhelming concern with how everything in life looks. Morgan Lee's younger sister Dana, is painfully aware that her family is different and disassociates herself from them by living with Aunt Lois. Morgan-Lee's father is an educator and only wants quiet in the family.

Into this heated setting enters an uninhibited young woman named, Sweety-Boy. Armed with a glib-tongue and a brash manner, Sweety-Boy sells jams door-to-door, barging her way into the homes and lives of the community. Morgan-Lee, along with her sister and brother are soon pulled into Sweety-Boys orbit, which proves to be the catalyst for Morgan-Lee's coming of age, the burgeoning of her sexuality and the violent rift that opens and becomes public between the siblings.

As told by Morgan-Lee, this story is deceptively quiet on the surface. The readers feel the tension growing, but until the end, we aren't told the reasons for those stresses. Many scenes open slowly and finish with powerful emotions or they unravel to transform into almost unbearable situations. The birthday party and Morgan-Lee's first day as a jam saleswoman both end with staggering unexpected twists.

BROKEN AS THINGS ARE is writer Martha Witt's first novel and I'm thankful I read it. I'm already longing to read her next work.

Martha Witt's Broken as Things Are is an engaging, imaginative story about the love and the sorrow of childhood. Witt's prose is precise, very often poetic, and with it she tells the story of Morgan Lee and her brother Ginx. Ginx communicates with words that are chosen not for their meaning, but their emotional resonance, as in `Portent, Bilous, Mustard, Enough'. And slowly, surely, detail by detail, Witt takes us deeper into the unique dilemmas of their childhood until we too not only begin to understand Ginx, but also come to appreciate this gift of using language to `sound ourselves out'. For all the revealing attention that is paid to dysfunction, the novel is also, at points, wonderfully funny. This blend of the tragic and the comic is wrapped into a novel that explores tragedy but is ultimately triumphant, if only because reading it is, like childhood itself, an experience in which all of our emotions are deeply felt.

Well, if you enjoy books about quirky, dysfunctional families, you're going to love this one. well written and easy to read, it flies right by, but leaves you with at least one very memorable character.
If you liked "The Glass Castle","The Box Children" or "Back Roads", this one should be right up your alley!

Martha Witt's first novel will soon be lauded throughout the world as a classic. A heart-felt story of youngsters growing up in the American South, Broken As Things Are tells the tale of the extarordinary Morgan-Lee and her oddly withdrawn older brother. Morgan-Lee is the only person who is able to understand and engage Ginx. Sharing a secret language, they escape together into a make-believe world. Unable to articulate his emotions, except through garbled, nosensical words, Ginx becomes increasingly disturbed by his sister's desire for friendships beyond the closed circle of their sibling love. The Summer in which this story takes place leaves Morgan Lee with the choice between her love for her brother and a life without him.
Against this tragic, but heartwarming backdrop, Broken As Things Are nonetheless succeeds in producing some beautifully light and moving moments, such as the children's growing friendship with the strange Sweety-Boy and her half brother Jacob. These two fascinating characters offer some truly tender and insightful commentary on the nature of childhood, imagination, and the inevitable and necessary pain of separation. And with Morgan-Lee, we follow her path from childhood to adulthood through her genuine inquisitiveness, and her eagerness to learn and feel.
Witt's writing is excellent, as it weaves from one interwoven part of the story to the next. Along the way, we meet a cornucopia of different characters and viewpoints. Each is brought to life through context and vivid descriptions.
Above all, Martha Witt's masterpiece is a story of growth and progress, even in the most complicated of experiences, childhood. Thought-provoking and inspiring.

I admit it: I was taken in by a blurb. Front and center on the cover of my paperback edition of Broken as Things Are, is this misleading recommendation by E. L. Doctorow. "Ms. Witt has staked out a territory somewhere between Harper Lee and Flannery O'Conner."

Doctorow is correct only in the sense that Martha Witt's prose style is both polished and modest. But in this book she has wasted her time and mine on a tale not worth telling.

Broken as Things Are tells the story of a young girl, Morgan Lee, and her family who are being torn apart by the illness of her psychopathic brother. (Here again the cover is misleading in stating that the brother has Asperger's Syndrome. But Asperger kids are not sadistic, manipulative, or progressively disassociative.) Her brother's illness envelopes Morgan Lee in sadomasochism and incest - obvious horrors to which neither narrator nor children pay any attention.

The author provides a bizarre solution to Morgan Lee's predicament. She falls under the spell of Sweety-Boy, a Really Bad Girl who simultaneously seduces Morgan Lee from her brother and scares her straight. In the penultimate scene, Sweety-Boy accepts a transferrence of Morgan Lee's problems and runs off naked into the night. Never mind that this is cheap fantasy - it preserves the moral ambiguity that is the book's only excuse.

BROKEN AS THINGS ARE by Martha Witt
August 28, 2005

Amazon Rating: 4/5 stars

Martha Witt's debut novel is the story of a young girl's relationship with her older brother who has Asperger's Syndrome, a condition related to autism in which a person has difficulties with social and communication skills, and may view the world differently than others do. Morgan Lee is one of three siblings. Ginx is the beautiful withdrawn older brother who latches onto Morgan Lee when she is born, the two becoming inseparable. Ginx develops an obsession over his younger sister, which becomes apparent when Morgan Lee tries to find her own friendships. She learns to live in Ginx's world, even acquiring the skills to communicate with him in a secret language only they understand. Though this is the only world she knows, the relationship isn't healthy, as the reader will eventually understand.

Though the complexities and dynamics between these family members may be hard to understood at first, they become clear by the time the reader has finished the story. It ends with a bang, but at the same time there is no real resolution. Broken as Things Are is a dark novel that follows in the tradition of classic Southern Literature, and a promising beginning to a literary career. Complete review at Bookloons. - M Lofton