Ebook394 pages5 hours
Breakable You: A Novel
By Brian Morton
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
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About this ebook
“A literary theft, a death and the sparking of desire make for a tumultuous year in the lives of four New Yorkers . . . [a] polished, affecting novel.” —People
Adam Weller is a moderately successful novelist, past his prime—but squiring around a much younger woman and still longing for greater fame and glory. His former wife, Eleanor, is unhappily playing the role of the overweight, discarded woman. Their daughter, Maud, has just begun a frankly sexual affair with an Arab American man that unexpectedly becomes life-changing. Into each of these lives the past intrudes in a way that will test them to their core.
Navigating nimbly between sharp humor and deeply felt emotion, the award-winning author of Florence Gordon tells a story of love, friendship, literary treachery, and what each of us owes to the past.
“Inside [Morton’s] broad comedy of manners is a heartfelt novel about the redemptive power of suffering.” —The New Yorker
“Morton is the rare writer equally invested in people and ideas. . . . [He] creates some of the most complex and real female characters of any writer.” —San Francisco Chronicle
Adam Weller is a moderately successful novelist, past his prime—but squiring around a much younger woman and still longing for greater fame and glory. His former wife, Eleanor, is unhappily playing the role of the overweight, discarded woman. Their daughter, Maud, has just begun a frankly sexual affair with an Arab American man that unexpectedly becomes life-changing. Into each of these lives the past intrudes in a way that will test them to their core.
Navigating nimbly between sharp humor and deeply felt emotion, the award-winning author of Florence Gordon tells a story of love, friendship, literary treachery, and what each of us owes to the past.
“Inside [Morton’s] broad comedy of manners is a heartfelt novel about the redemptive power of suffering.” —The New Yorker
“Morton is the rare writer equally invested in people and ideas. . . . [He] creates some of the most complex and real female characters of any writer.” —San Francisco Chronicle
Author
Brian Morton
Brian Morton is the author of five novels, including Starting Out in the Evening and Florence Gordon. He has been a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Koret Jewish Book Award, the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Pushcart Prize, and a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner award and the Kirkus Prize. He teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in New York.
Read more from Brian Morton
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Reviews for Breakable You
Rating: 3.3636363636363638 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
22 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Weller family: Eleanor is 59, a psychologist, feeling old and overweight, who split up with her husband a year ago because of his affairs; that ex-husband is Adam Weller, early '60s, a novelist who thinks very highly of himself, has discovered Viagra and a very young girlfriend; Maud is their daughter, a doctoral student in philosophy, who has a history of nervous breakdowns. Happiness and tragedy strike with equal force, and insight is gained, but the overall message I took away from this book was that we are who we are and our roles rarely change. In times of crisis, change may seem possible; but when the crisis passes, we revert to the person we were before the crisis. Very real characters, no pat ending. Enjoyed this book.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Engrossing well-written but unlikely story of a woman whose husband, a narcissistic novelist, left her. Their daughter has an improbable affair with an Arab who dies,has a baby, and gets so depressed she can't care for it.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5BREAKABLE YOU, by Brian Morton.I managed to finish this book, but never could bring myself to care much about the characters, they were all simply too unlikeable, the same problem I had with Morton's previous book, STARTING OUT IN THE EVENING. There are four principals: Adam Weller, a mid-tier New York Jewish writer; his ex-wife Eleanor, a self-pitying psychologist; his adult daughter Maud, a philosophy student who's already had a couple of breakdowns; and Samir, Maud's Arab-American lover. Too bad Morton chose to focus most on Maud, because I'd have liked more about Adam, conscienceless womanizer and - even worse - a literary thief. A prick, no question, but more interesting that Maud, whose pursuit of Samir through a series of silent oral sex liaisons, was, I thought, laughable. Morton tries to temper this with Maud's inner monologues. An intellectual with a sense of humor, obviously no 'Monkey' this girl, but Morton seems to be trying to 'out-Portnoy' Roth, and it's still not much more than a dressed-up male fantasy. Later developments in the Maud-Samir relationship attempt to inject some tragic overtones, as well as some commentary on the Jew-Arab matchup, but, in the end I just didn't care.This is not really a bad book; Morton is a very talented writer who has all the tools. One blurb here says Morton "creates some of the most complex and real female characters of any writer." Well, I don't think so. For some real female characters by a male writer, I would recommend some of McMurtry's early novels, like MOVING ON or TERMS OF ENDEARMENT. The women in this book? Nope. Not even close.
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Breakable You - Brian Morton
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