Broken
by J. Matthew Nespoli
ISBN: 978-1-935444-45-9
360 pages MENDING WHAT HAS BEEN
BROKEN
Reviewed by Janet Grace
Riehl
If your life has been broken, can it be mended? J. Matthew Nespoli's
debut novel "Broken" seeks to answer this heartfelt question
many of us have asked in our lives.
Nespoli assembles a group of 14 desperately damaged characters
equally balanced by gender. That's a lot of characters to follow.
Fortunately, there's an appendix to help the reader keep them all
straight. The book spans ten years in Los Angeles from October
1996 to April 2006 in a story told through alternating points of
view structured by interlocking vignettes.
In the early part of "Broken," we meet both rich and
poor disaffected youths who are equally scarred by abuse and addiction.
Sex, drugs, and violence mark and mar lives on the edge--from whatever
class. Pursued by their demons they sabotage and break their dreams
of fame, fortune, and out-sized success.
These characters are entrenched in their suffering whose roots
sometimes arise from situations and sometimes from stupidity. What
holds their individual lives and relationships together? The exchange
between Amber and Ron (p. 146) answers this question clearly:
Amber: "Sometimes I think we're all living a different version
of the same sad story."
Ron: "We were two broken people who needed each other."
Gradually each of the 14 characters begin to heal their broken
lives as these lives wind ever more tightly together. They learn
to "keep walking/despite...broken selves" (p. 356). As
the tagline says, "We are all a little broken; love is the
glue that keeps us from completely falling apart."
Skye is a teenage homeless musician battling a drug addiction
who dreams of unattainable rock stardom. She's befriended by Amber,
a young mother on the run from two dangerous men from her past.
The two girls form a mutually indispensable bond, one that could
ultimately save them. Dylan is a pseudo-intellectual-Chuck Palahniuk
wanna-be, and a total cynic. He lives with TJ, an out of work actor,
who fails auditions by day, and wears a hamburger suit outside
a burger joint at the mall by night. TJ and Dylan are artistic
failures in need of a muse to kick start their careers. Broken follows several other interesting individuals (all based on real
people), each with their own humorous twisted narrative as they
try to put the pieces of their lives back together.
