Broken: A Novel
By Daniel Clay
4/5
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About this ebook
Until that fateful afternoon, Skunk Cunningham had been a normal little girl, playing on the curb in front of her house. Rick Buckley had been a normal geeky teenager, hosing off his brand-new car. Bob Oswald had been a normal sociopathic single father of five slutty daughters, charging furiously down the sidewalk. Then Bob was beating Rick to a bloody pulp, right there in the Buckleys' driveway, and life on Drummond Square was never the same again.
Inspired by Harper Lee's classic To Kill a Mockingbird, Clay's brilliantly observed and darkly funny novel follows the sudden unraveling of a suburban community after a single act of thoughtless cruelty.
Daniel Clay
Daniel Clay is thirty-eight years old and married with no children. He lives in Hampshire in the UK. ‘Swap’ is his second novel.
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Reviews for Broken
15 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I loved reading To Kill a Mockingbird back in high school, and I could sense that inspiration in the book from the very first chapter. This was before I even noticed that on the back cover, it is said that the book was inspired by that classic. Although Broken does not deal with some of the same issues of race and prejudice, it does touch on other important issues. About poverty, about love, about irrational actions, about cruelty. I loved this book to say the least. It gives such an insightful and scary portrayal of what can go on in the world that you makes you really question where you live and the people you live around. This does not mean that I'm going to be paranoid about my neighbour across the street. But it really does make you question people you don't know. The world today just isn't as safe as it once was.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5As the author himself admits, this novel is a deliberate homage to To Kill a Mockingbird (set in contemporary England), but there's more to it than that. The title refers not just to the character known as "Broken Buckley," whose dalliance with a trashy neighborhood girl sets in motion a series of brutal events, but to all the characters who occupy this bleak landscape, all of whom have been broken in one way or another by the unfortunate circumstances of their lives. Some are morally broken, some have had their spirits broken, and the main character, 11-year-old Skunk, who narrates parts of the story from deep within a coma, has been physically and mentally broken by the unspeakable horror she witnessed and endured. The mystery of exactly what happened to Skunk makes this a gripping and suspenseful, if disturbing, read. The things that can help broken people carry on and heal themselves are also revealed, offering a glimmer of hope in a imperfect world.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5An interesting look at how one act of violence can lead to others and how violence can affect more than just the original people involved.A thought it sounded like an interesting concept, and although some parts were really interesting, the book fell short for me.The writing skipped around a bit, which made the book a bit confusing for me. The end was not very clear so that even now as I write the review, I am not sure what happened to Skunk.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Awesome novel.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is an extraordinary novel with a huge variety of characters and events which all interweave to lead to the main event of the story: Skunk is a young girl in a coma and she's telling you her story of how it happened.The most remarkable thing is the picture Daniel Clay paints of the 'family from hell'. This is not Skunk's family but a family who live near her and whose actions create havoc and lead to tragedy. You can't help but wonder if it isn't just an extreme caricature. And yet, deep down, part of you knows it isn't. That there are families like that and their actions can ripple out to affect many people.That's partly what makes this novel so thought provoking - it's a worrying reflection of modern society in some ways. It is also thought provoking because you realise the huge ramifications of some 'wrong place, wrong time' moments, a wrong word, a misguided act.Thankfully, not all is gloomy. Clay paints a picture of some very vicious characters but he also manages to show that there are many good people and that fundamentally most of us are decent, if not misguided.