Lisa's review
bookshelves:
fiction
status:
Read in January, 2008
Interesting that the author has chosen to write about broken bits of china because this was one of the more fractured stories I've read. The book starts off as one thing, becomes several more stories somewhere along the line and ultimately ends as a very different tale. The characters were so interesting and yet I found them behaving in the most unbelievable ways. How does a 70+ year old dying woman who has disdained company for much of her life suddenly decide to not only take in a border and allow this complete stranger free reign of her home, but then to suddenly take in more borders. How does her border not know (and everyone else does) that Margaret is dying? How 'bout them stereotypes, like the eldery Holocaust survivor? And how about the gay Jewish chef and the near-middle aged nursing assistant suddenly having a baby together to create a living mosaic of this new American family? The only character I truly liked at the end of the story was the one we weren't introduced...more
Interesting that the author has chosen to write about broken bits of china because this was one of the more fractured stories I've read. The book starts off as one thing, becomes several more stories somewhere along the line and ultimately ends as a very different tale. The characters were so interesting and yet I found them behaving in the most unbelievable ways. How does a 70+ year old dying woman who has disdained company for much of her life suddenly decide to not only take in a border and allow this complete stranger free reign of her home, but then to suddenly take in more borders. How does her border not know (and everyone else does) that Margaret is dying? How 'bout them stereotypes, like the eldery Holocaust survivor? And how about the gay Jewish chef and the near-middle aged nursing assistant suddenly having a baby together to create a living mosaic of this new American family? The only character I truly liked at the end of the story was the one we weren't introduced to at the beginning - Wanda's father. Everyone else, once the author introduced us to them and explained who they were, suddenly acted like someone else entirely. I liked how she connected the two stories together, but I think had she introduced the characters of M.J. and Irma much earlier and left out the additional characters in the Margaret/Wanda story line, it might not have felt so... clunky....less
Broken for You 
