An important book. A hard read. Family love. Strong, educated women. Generational abuse. These are some of the comments made at book group yesterday afternoon in our discussion about The Break by Métis author Katherena Vermette. The Break is all of those things and so much more. Most of it is beyond my ability to write in this review.
Katherena Vermette did not soft pedal any unpleasantness. The reader was not spared the brutality of the abuses. The incredible sadness of Lorraine (Rain) freezing to death behind a dumpster in a prairie winter after a beating is only one. When I think now of those incidents, because this is not the only one, family love and compassion for each other swaddled the broken souls to help them heal.
The Break, an open stretch of land under tall robot like power standards, is isolated and, in winter, impassable. Stella, Rain’s daughter, lives on one side of The Break just a couple of bus rides from her family on the other side of The Break. Stella witnesses a brutal assault, but can do nothing about it except call 911. Two police officers arrive four hours later. Tommy Scott, Métis a young police officer and Christie, a senior and very jaded officer begin an investigation into the assault. Christie is not particularly enthused, but Tommy is determined to pursue the investigation. Although, these two characters are seen throughout the novel, it is not their investigation that is at the centre of this book.
On the other side of The Break, family members are introduced - Cheryl, Louise (Lou), Paulina (Paul), and Emily (13 years old). Kookum and her daughters, grand-daughters and her great-granddaughters have close family ties with each other. They support each other throughout their lives, with the support of a close friend Rita, and her daughter, Zegwan (Ziggy - also 13 years old). Sons are raised and cherished. Love relationships are strained but love is deep despite the many difficulties. Family bonds provide the peace to gentle the violent events that rock their lives.
In counterpoint to this gentle and strong family connection and love, is the lack of family connection for one of the characters outside of the family. I’ll not give away this part of the story, only to say that compassion came with difficulty, at least for this reader.
“The dead don’t hang on, the living do. The dead don’t have anything to hang on to. Our bodies become nothing, and we just float around the people who love us. We go back to nothing. That is all we ever were or should ever be.”
~Katherena Vermette, The Break
Title: The Break
Author: Katherena Vermette
Copyright: 2016
Format: Soft & electronic
Paperback - ISBN-978-1-4870-0111-7
html - ISBN-978-1-4870-0112-4
No comments:
Post a Comment