The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart [Hardcover]

Alice Walker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 3, 2000

"These are the stories that came to me to be told after the close of a magical marriage to an extraordinary man that ended in a less-than-magical divorce. I found myself unmoored, unmated, ungrounded in a way that challenged everything I'd ever thought about human relationships. Situated squarely in that terrifying paradise called freedom, precipitously out on so many emotional limbs, it was as if I had been born; and in fact I was being reborn as the woman I was to become."

So says Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker about her beautiful new book, in which "one of the best American writers today" (The Washington Post) gives us superb stories based on rich truths from her own experience. Imbued with Walker's wise philosophy and understanding of people, the spirit, sex and love, The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart begins with a lyrical, autobiographical story of a marriage set in the violent and volatile Deep South during the early years of the civil rights movement. Walker goes on to imagine stories that grew out of the life following that marriage—a life, she writes, that was "marked by deep sea-changes and transitions." These provocative stories showcase Walker's hard-won knowledge of love of many kinds and of the relationships that shape our lives, as well as her infectious sense of humor and joy. Filled with wonder at the power of the life force and of the capacity of human beings to move through love and loss and healing to love again, The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart is an enriching, passionate book by "a lavishly gifted writer" (The New York Times Book Review).

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Even a fickle reader of Alice Walker will find something to admire in The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart. This tender, elegiac collection of stories is based in part on her early marriage to a white man and her continuing puzzlement at how their connection--once so charmed and resilient--faded to nothing. Looking back at their happy years together in "the racially volatile and violent Deep South state of Mississippi," a place and time in which their union was not only unconventional but illegal, Walker is also led to imagine other, less metaphoric homecomings. After the initial autobiographical story, "To My Young Husband," she turns to a character named Rosa, a novelist like herself, who returns home to the South with her sister, Barbara, after their grandfather's death. Rosa had not made it to the funeral, since news of his death arrived just as she was leaving on a long-planned holiday abroad. Now, belatedly, she has come to gather family stories. But when she asks her Aunt Lily a question, this woman glares back at her with something close to hatred: "I don't want to find myself in anything you write. And you can just leave your daddy alone too." Reeling, Rosa turns to her sister for comfort, but Barbara, too, rejects her with "a look that said she'd got the reply she'd deserved."

For wasn't she always snooping about the family's business and turning things about in her writing in ways that made the family shudder? There was no talking to her as you talked to regular people. The minute you opened your mouth a meter went on. Rose could read all this on her sister's face. She didn't need to speak. And it was a lonely feeling that she had. For Barbara was right. Aunt Lily too. And she could no more stop the meter running than she could stop her breath.

With her characteristic insight and her slow, colloquial prose--seeded with anger but watered with hope--Walker explores the territory of her own broken heart and those of African Americans of her generation. --Regina Marler

From Publishers Weekly

HIn 13 affectionate stories, Walker (The Color Purple; By the Light of My Father's Smile) reflects on the nature of passion and friendship, pondering the emotional trajectories of lives and loves. Some of the pieces are directly autobiographical, as Walker explains in her preface. "To My Young Husband" is about her marriage as a young woman to a Jewish civil rights lawyer and their difficult but mostly happy decade in Mississippi and Brooklyn. Many years later, telling her daughter the story of the marriage, Walker wonders how she and her ex-husband, once so close, could have become such strangers. Other stories are "mostly fiction, but with a definite thread of having come out of a singular life." Old hurts are soothed in "Olive Oil," in which Orelia learns to trust her husband, John, and not visit the sins of the past upon him. In "The Brotherhood of the Saved," Hannah, the lesbian narrator, confronts the bigotry of religion and attempts to save her relationship with her mother, whose fundamentalist church is urging her to ostracize her daughter. A trip to a screening of Deep Throat gets the older woman and two of her friends talking about sex, but true acceptance proves more elusive. Infusing her intimate tales with grace and humor, Walker probes hidden corners of the human experience, at once questioning and acknowledging sexual, racial and cultural rifts. Though a few stories tip into self-indulgence and read less like fiction than personal testimony, this is nonetheless a strong, moving collection. A common theme runs throughoutDwe are all obliged to love and be loved, no matter how blind, inexpert or troublesome we may be. 100,000 first printing; 8-city author tour. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1 edition (October 3, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679455876
• ISBN-13: 978-0679455875
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,271,120 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Alice Walker is one of the most prolific writers of our time, known for her literary fiction, including the Pultizer Prize-winning The Color Purple, her many volumes of poetry, and her powerful nonfiction collections. Walker's most recent book is The Chicken Chronicles, a memoir. Her advocacy for the dispossessed has spanned the globe. She lives in Northern California.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Alice Walker never disappoints, October 3, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart (Hardcover)

This is a beautiful book. It is a collection of related stories about love and heartbreak, but typical of Alice Walker, it is never bitter. When reading something that I know is autobiographical, the temptation is strong to wonder which parts "really happened" and which are made up or embellished. However, I found myself letting go of that urge once I sank into the book (which I read in one afternoon). Every word that Alice Walker writes is true - it doesn't matter which details were made up or changed, Alice Walker always writes of truth and beauty.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully Bittersweet and Binding...., October 21, 2000

By 

Zon Mundhenk "Zons" (Lost In America) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart (Hardcover)

Walker is, in this book, as always, compelling and lyrical, binding the soul of the reader into the souls of her characters. I wept, actually, reading "To My Young Husband", a story that resonates so painfully right now in my life as my young husband divorces me for another woman.

But as I read, and read these stories of broken hearts, of broken dreams, I realized that this book lacked what I desperately desired: an easy answer, a simple way forward. How DO I survive this? It seems that Walker's characters simply limp on, terminally scarred, never recovering, just surviving. And maybe, just possibly, that will be the way for me; I will go on, but never recover. I lack any sisters to go on midnight swims with, I lack an Auntie Putt-Putt to tell me how much more terrible things could be. Perhaps this book holds too much of brutal reality, that innocence and joy, once lost, cannot be regained.

This is not a book of hope, or cheery good endings, of neatly tied strings. It is not "Echinacea And Tofu Soup For The Soul". But it is beautiful, and terrible, and true, and well worth reading many times.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Classic!, October 14, 2000

By 

"mentorearl" (Indianapolis, Indiana United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart (Hardcover)

Alice Walker has returned with what is certainly her best work in years. After releasing the self-indulgent essays in "The Same River Twice" and "Anything You Love Can Be Saved" and the mediocre "coming out" novel "By the Light of My Father's Smile" (as a Walker novel it's standard fare; as a "coming out" story it's disappointing- lesser artist have done better)Walker returns with a collection of short stories that ranks among her novels "The Color Purple," "The Temple of My Familiar" and "Possessing the Secret to Joy." At first one may be tempted to think that these stories are merely Walker's version of the cliche "If it doesn't kill you, it will make you stronger" but these stories go deeper than that, particularly in "To My Young Husband- Memoir of a Marriage," the autobiographical piece in which Walker recounts her marriage to a white, Jewish civil rights lwayer in Mississippi during the '60's. There is an ache that runs through this piece that the reader actually feels as they're reading it. There is also the hilarious story "The Brotherhood of the Saved" in which the protaganist takes her elderly mother and aunts to see an adult film; deals with her relationship with her father and "The Brotherhood" who are meddling- sorry- trying to help save her uncle's soul before his death after years of descrimination. There is also the wonderful story of Orelia and John that follows "Memoir of a Marriage," in which a woman is contemplating an affair with a colleague, but instead tells her partner about her feelings and they work through them together, loving their way back to each other. This book assert that, as Walker told NPR in a recent interview, "you can bear the unbearable" because "the way forward is with a broken heart."