Half Broken Things - Hardcover

Joss, Morag

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0340820489 ISBN 13: 9780340820483

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton, 2003

Synopsis

Jean, Michael and Steph are three reluctant loners who are getting by. Damaged and fearful of life, they cannot survive alone for much longer. A mixture of deceit, good luck and misfortune draw them together to Walden Manor, a secluded and gracious country house that promises sanctuary, freedom from failure and impending destitution.

Out of an invented past they shape a beautiful present, full of hope and happiness. And beguiled by the gentle passing of time itself, all three of them, for the first time in their lives, lose their dread of the future. If their sense of safety is built on a delusion, does it matter?

When the idyll is threatened, Jean, Michael and Steph discover that because their lives are now worth living they are also now worth preserving, although at appalling cost.

In this stunning novel, which explores what happens when the 'have-nots' strive to become the 'haves', Morag Joss combines thought-provoking, sometimes chilling moral complexity with humane and compelling story-telling. Half Broken Things is a dark story, richly told, about love and our need for it: the damage done when we go too long without it, and what people might be driven to do in its name.

About this title

Review

Winner of a prestigious Crime Writers' Association Dagger Award, Half Broken Things is quite the most impressive novel yet from a writer whose work (Funeral Music, Fearful Symmetry) has combined total narrative command with a laser-like psychological penetration.

The central themes of Half Broken Things are twofold: the fragility of the shell of reality that hides deeper truths, and the destructive hold of the past over the present. Jean Wade has made her living housesitting, when (in her 60s) she loses her job. But discovering the keys to the locked cupboards and secrets of her current home, the spacious Walden Manor, she is able to assume ownership. And then begins a strange transformation: Jean starts to alter things in the Manor, while acquiring a surrogate family: Michael and Steph have, like Jean, not made a success of their lives, and the sanctuary the trio create is built upon an extrapolated--and illusory--past. But the happiness they enjoy proves to be transitory, when dark secrets from the past begin to tear the thread of their day-to-day existence. And the grim resolution of their liaison all too quickly comes upon them, as their past actions come destructively back.

The level of insight into the hidden recesses of the human mind is as assured here as in any "literary" novel, and such masters of this kind of narrative (in the non-crime field) as William Trevor are both evoked and matched in achievement. Jean, in particular, is a brilliantly realised character, and Half Broken Things is a novel that deserves all the accolades that have been thrown its way. --Barry Forshaw

Review

'This book is a triumphant performance. People will be standing to applaud . . . She displays an astonishing insight into the darker recesses of the human soul . . . After I finished this book I found it hard to sleep, so deep was my disquiet at the gathering horror of the narrative and the subtle way in which Joss makes the reader complicit through inevitable sympathy with the damaged ones. Her confidence in handling shifts of narrative, the unobtrusively fine descriptions of the natural world, and uncanny gift for dialogue and, above all, a forensic ability to deconstruct psychological disintegration, combine to make a work of fiction that sets its author on the path to greatness.' - (Bel Mooney, The Times)

The skilful plotting, strong sense of place and colourful but credible characters would alone mark this book out. What makes it not only convincing crime writing but also a fine novel is its lively sense of social comedy and sharp wit (The Good Book Guide)

'She displays an astonishing insight into the darker recesses of the human soul . . . After I finished this book I found it hard to sleep, so deep was my disquiet at the gathering horror of the narrative and the subtle way in which Joss makes the reader complicit through inevitable sympathy with the damaged ones.
Her confidence in handling shifts of narrative, the unobtrusively fine descriptions of the natural world, and uncanny gift for dialogue and, above all, a forensic ability to deconstruct psychological disintegration, combine to make a work of fiction that sets its author on the path to greatness.' - Bel Mooney, The Times

A fascinating moral exercise as well as a gripping novel (Scotland on Sunday)

Morag Joss writes with razor sharp, wry observation (Bath Chronicle)

HALF BROKEN THINGS is sad, funny, original and wise (The Literary Review)

Well written and well plotted, with a good Bath background (Evening Standard)

'A dark humour peaks through the grimmer parts of the story . . . Joss is a writer to treasure.' - Sunday Herald (')

Morag Joss gets better with each book. (Donna Leon on Fruitful Bodies)

'an accomplished and intriguing book. Joss writes with a haunting gentleness, studying her characters so well they become almost psychologically transparent en route to a harrowing climax in this mesmerising tale of human failings.' - Scottish Daily Record

About this edition

• Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0340820489
• ISBN 13: 9780340820483
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304