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."
Matthew has traveled the world and met many interesting people. He is hard at work on his second novel, The Suck Monster, a humorous memoir about fatherhood. Matthew resides in Hermosa Beach, CA, with his wife and newborn son. He owns, operates, and writes for a highly popular socio-political Web site: www.nakedwordsurfer.com. Matthew is passionate about writing and seeks to make it is full-time career. Broken is his debut novel.
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.
