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A review by jessraven
The Break by Katherena Vermette
5.0
As a passionate reader, I believe that I speak for all of us when I say that I love a complex story – a story that seemingly goes in all different directions, but instead the various plots ultimately end up converging to tell a well-rounded tale.
I first experienced this style of storytelling in 2010, through the novel Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan, in which the stories of two high school boys who share the same name end up intersecting near the novel’s conclusion. I was fascinated by such a unique way of telling a story, and ever since have been clamoring to find more books just like it.
In The Break, Vermette is daring in ways that Green and Levithan weren’t; whereas Will Grayson, Will Grayson limits itself to the perspectives of only two individuals, strictly telling their stories through first-person narration, The Break is comprised of the stories of no less than ten individuals, and the style of narration is constantly in flux. From first-person, to third-person limited, to the third person omniscient perspective of a ghost-like figure watching the events of the story unfold, Vermette’s novel is about as complex as one can get and readers will devour every single word.
Without giving away too much of the plot and thus ruining the eye-opening moment(s) when the reader realizes how the characters’ stories intersect, the simplest way to describe The Break is by proclaiming that it is a fearless novel. Vermette concurrently tells the stories of several Aboriginal Canadians - many of whom belong to the Charles family - and the struggles they endured both in the past and the present.
I say that the novel is fearless because Vermette holds nothing back when depicting the harsh realities of these characters’ lives. She deals with subject matter such as rape; child abuse and molestation; alcoholism and drug abuse; juvenile delinquency; gang initiations, activity, and violence; and much more, and she sugar-coats absolutely nothing, which inevitably produces heavy, at times even disturbing scenes. Yet, the way in which Vermette approaches her novel’s subject matter is necessary; if she were to skim over the darker details of the story, the resulting effect would be nowhere near as poignant. When reading The Break, it is Vermette’s blunt storytelling that makes her characters’ pain resonate so strongly with her audience; in fact, I would recommend having tissues on hand while reading, particularly during the sections of the novel told from Emily’s and Paul’s perspectives.
Furthermore, Vermette’s story will resonate with audiences through the clever ways in which she makes readers relate to her characters prior to tragedy striking. There is a particularly strong emphasis placed upon the innocence of Emily and Zegwan (“Ziggy”), two thirteen-year-old girls that the audience is introduced to in the novel’s second chapter. They are two perfectly average teens who female readers of any age will likely relate to instantly. Just breaking into the early days of adolescence, Emily and Ziggy are boy crazy; Ziggy’s got it bad for Jared Padalecki, who plays Sam Winchester in CW drama, Supernatural, whereas Emily is head-over-heels for Clayton Spence, an older boy at their school whom she likes because “she [can] see [him] in person and find out what he smell[s] like” (pp. 18).
There’s nothing more innocent than a celebrity crush, except perhaps silently pining for a cute boy at school, and both are experiences that many women had when they were young. The sheer relatability of these innocent young girls thus makes what happens to them later in the novel all the more shocking and unsettling, because it makes the reader realize that equally terrible things could have happened to them when they were young and boy crazy. Vermette takes every possible opportunity to make her characters, young and old, highly relatable, which is why readers will be unable to put the novel down. We want to know what happens next because we feel that there is a part of ourselves within each of the characters depicted, making the story incredibly personal.
Finding oneself within the characters is a deeply important aspect of reading The Break, as searching for one’s identity is ultimately what many of the characters are struggling to do. Emily and Ziggy are experimenting with what type of women they want to be (i.e. do they want to be geeks or party girls?); Stella is struggling to find a balance between her new life as a young mother, married to a white man, and her Metis roots and ties to her family; Lou is trying to figure out who she is as an individual after two tumultuous relationships; Phoenix, a teenage delinquent, wants to be tough like her uncle because she thinks that is the type of person that she has to be; Sunny and Jake are two teenage boys on the cusp of manhood who, despite hating the concept of gangs, know that they will eventually have to choose which gang they want to be a part of; and the list goes on. In The Break, Vermette does an outstanding job of pitching identity crises that all readers across every walk of life will be able to relate to whilst simultaneously opening her readers’ eyes to the various crises of identity often unique to struggling young Aboriginal men and women like Stella, Phoenix, and Jake.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the novel showcases the fact that racism is still prevalent in Canada, even if many Canadians prefer to turn a blind eye and pretend otherwise in comparison to our neighbors to the south. Most prominent in the text’s many narratives are the racial tensions present within the story of Officer Tommy Scott. Scott, whose mother was Metis and father was a red-headed white man, has experienced racism his entire life, both blatant and backhanded. His father was a nasty man who sought to “tame” Scott’s Aboriginal mother and fiercely rejected his son’s heritage, forcing him to do the same through physical and verbal abuse in a manner that is very clearly reminiscent of the treatment of Aboriginal youth in residential schools. It is possible that Vermette did this on purpose, to convey that such behaviours and attitudes have not changed at all in the years since the schools were shut down. Furthermore, even after escaping his father’s racism following his death, even Scott’s girlfriend, Hannah, expresses traces of inadvertent racism; she “makes jokes sometimes, vague unfunny quips about her man’s wild ways, how she tamed him. She doesn’t mean anything by it, and he’s never told her it bothers him” (pp. 77). By exposing not only blunt racism, but subtle racism, as well, Vermette emphasizes that racial tensions are deeply engrained within Canadian society, and only by addressing it will things ever change. The fact that Scott “never told [Hannah]” that her racist jokes bothered him is indicative that dialogue needs to occur on both sides, which is a stance that very few narratives in recent years have taken.
The Break is, without a doubt, one of the most emotionally charged, powerful, and beautifully written novels that I have had the pleasure of reading. Its daring approach to storytelling, bold portrayal of risqué subject matter, and strong relatability make it a novel that should be on everyone’s 2018 “To Read” list, and this particular reader gives it a strong five-star rating.
I first experienced this style of storytelling in 2010, through the novel Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan, in which the stories of two high school boys who share the same name end up intersecting near the novel’s conclusion. I was fascinated by such a unique way of telling a story, and ever since have been clamoring to find more books just like it.
In The Break, Vermette is daring in ways that Green and Levithan weren’t; whereas Will Grayson, Will Grayson limits itself to the perspectives of only two individuals, strictly telling their stories through first-person narration, The Break is comprised of the stories of no less than ten individuals, and the style of narration is constantly in flux. From first-person, to third-person limited, to the third person omniscient perspective of a ghost-like figure watching the events of the story unfold, Vermette’s novel is about as complex as one can get and readers will devour every single word.
Without giving away too much of the plot and thus ruining the eye-opening moment(s) when the reader realizes how the characters’ stories intersect, the simplest way to describe The Break is by proclaiming that it is a fearless novel. Vermette concurrently tells the stories of several Aboriginal Canadians - many of whom belong to the Charles family - and the struggles they endured both in the past and the present.
I say that the novel is fearless because Vermette holds nothing back when depicting the harsh realities of these characters’ lives. She deals with subject matter such as rape; child abuse and molestation; alcoholism and drug abuse; juvenile delinquency; gang initiations, activity, and violence; and much more, and she sugar-coats absolutely nothing, which inevitably produces heavy, at times even disturbing scenes. Yet, the way in which Vermette approaches her novel’s subject matter is necessary; if she were to skim over the darker details of the story, the resulting effect would be nowhere near as poignant. When reading The Break, it is Vermette’s blunt storytelling that makes her characters’ pain resonate so strongly with her audience; in fact, I would recommend having tissues on hand while reading, particularly during the sections of the novel told from Emily’s and Paul’s perspectives.
Furthermore, Vermette’s story will resonate with audiences through the clever ways in which she makes readers relate to her characters prior to tragedy striking. There is a particularly strong emphasis placed upon the innocence of Emily and Zegwan (“Ziggy”), two thirteen-year-old girls that the audience is introduced to in the novel’s second chapter. They are two perfectly average teens who female readers of any age will likely relate to instantly. Just breaking into the early days of adolescence, Emily and Ziggy are boy crazy; Ziggy’s got it bad for Jared Padalecki, who plays Sam Winchester in CW drama, Supernatural, whereas Emily is head-over-heels for Clayton Spence, an older boy at their school whom she likes because “she [can] see [him] in person and find out what he smell[s] like” (pp. 18).
There’s nothing more innocent than a celebrity crush, except perhaps silently pining for a cute boy at school, and both are experiences that many women had when they were young. The sheer relatability of these innocent young girls thus makes what happens to them later in the novel all the more shocking and unsettling, because it makes the reader realize that equally terrible things could have happened to them when they were young and boy crazy. Vermette takes every possible opportunity to make her characters, young and old, highly relatable, which is why readers will be unable to put the novel down. We want to know what happens next because we feel that there is a part of ourselves within each of the characters depicted, making the story incredibly personal.
Finding oneself within the characters is a deeply important aspect of reading The Break, as searching for one’s identity is ultimately what many of the characters are struggling to do. Emily and Ziggy are experimenting with what type of women they want to be (i.e. do they want to be geeks or party girls?); Stella is struggling to find a balance between her new life as a young mother, married to a white man, and her Metis roots and ties to her family; Lou is trying to figure out who she is as an individual after two tumultuous relationships; Phoenix, a teenage delinquent, wants to be tough like her uncle because she thinks that is the type of person that she has to be; Sunny and Jake are two teenage boys on the cusp of manhood who, despite hating the concept of gangs, know that they will eventually have to choose which gang they want to be a part of; and the list goes on. In The Break, Vermette does an outstanding job of pitching identity crises that all readers across every walk of life will be able to relate to whilst simultaneously opening her readers’ eyes to the various crises of identity often unique to struggling young Aboriginal men and women like Stella, Phoenix, and Jake.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the novel showcases the fact that racism is still prevalent in Canada, even if many Canadians prefer to turn a blind eye and pretend otherwise in comparison to our neighbors to the south. Most prominent in the text’s many narratives are the racial tensions present within the story of Officer Tommy Scott. Scott, whose mother was Metis and father was a red-headed white man, has experienced racism his entire life, both blatant and backhanded. His father was a nasty man who sought to “tame” Scott’s Aboriginal mother and fiercely rejected his son’s heritage, forcing him to do the same through physical and verbal abuse in a manner that is very clearly reminiscent of the treatment of Aboriginal youth in residential schools. It is possible that Vermette did this on purpose, to convey that such behaviours and attitudes have not changed at all in the years since the schools were shut down. Furthermore, even after escaping his father’s racism following his death, even Scott’s girlfriend, Hannah, expresses traces of inadvertent racism; she “makes jokes sometimes, vague unfunny quips about her man’s wild ways, how she tamed him. She doesn’t mean anything by it, and he’s never told her it bothers him” (pp. 77). By exposing not only blunt racism, but subtle racism, as well, Vermette emphasizes that racial tensions are deeply engrained within Canadian society, and only by addressing it will things ever change. The fact that Scott “never told [Hannah]” that her racist jokes bothered him is indicative that dialogue needs to occur on both sides, which is a stance that very few narratives in recent years have taken.
The Break is, without a doubt, one of the most emotionally charged, powerful, and beautifully written novels that I have had the pleasure of reading. Its daring approach to storytelling, bold portrayal of risqué subject matter, and strong relatability make it a novel that should be on everyone’s 2018 “To Read” list, and this particular reader gives it a strong five-star rating.