The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart

Rating:
Summary: Moving Stories...............
Review: ..................that analyze the experience of romantic love in all its complex forms. As only Alice Walker can do, with such convincing story lines, common elements of romantic love are demonstrated in stories about transracial, gay/lesbian, rich and poor, educated and less educated couples. Walker shows us how superficial circumstances may differ, while preserving those characteristics of relationships that are common to us all. In doing so she breaks down stereotypes and we come to see her characters as human beings who are just like ourselves.

Rating:
Summary: Onward and Upward
Review: A great collection of short stories. Some more enjoyable than others but all collectively express the challenges of love, loss, race, identity - life. Forever passionate, Walker's writing uncovers the emotional nerves beneath the actual experiences that shape our lives. Through it all - the ups and downs, the pain and suffering, emerges a powerful writer who continues to discover the secretes of joy and makes every effort to pass them on. "The Way Forward Is With A Broken Heart", is well worth the time you'll spend with it and yourself.

Rating:
Summary: A Classic!
Review: Alice Walker has returned with what is certainly her best work in years. After releasing the self-indulgent essays in "The Same River Twice" and "Anything You Love Can Be Saved" and the mediocre "coming out" novel "By the Light of My Father's Smile" (as a Walker novel it's standard fare; as a "coming out" story it's disappointing- lesser artist have done better)Walker returns with a collection of short stories that ranks among her novels "The Color Purple," "The Temple of My Familiar" and "Possessing the Secret to Joy." At first one may be tempted to think that these stories are merely Walker's version of the cliche "If it doesn't kill you, it will make you stronger" but these stories go deeper than that, particularly in "To My Young Husband- Memoir of a Marriage," the autobiographical piece in which Walker recounts her marriage to a white, Jewish civil rights lwayer in Mississippi during the '60's. There is an ache that runs through this piece that the reader actually feels as they're reading it. There is also the hilarious story "The Brotherhood of the Saved" in which the protaganist takes her elderly mother and aunts to see an adult film; deals with her relationship with her father and "The Brotherhood" who are meddling- sorry- trying to help save her uncle's soul before his death after years of descrimination. There is also the wonderful story of Orelia and John that follows "Memoir of a Marriage," in which a woman is contemplating an affair with a colleague, but instead tells her partner about her feelings and they work through them together, loving their way back to each other. This book assert that, as Walker told NPR in a recent interview, "you can bear the unbearable" because "the way forward is with a broken heart."

Rating:
Summary: A Classic!
Review: Alice Walker has returned with what is certainly her best work in years. After releasing the self-indulgent essays in "The Same River Twice" and "Anything You Love Can Be Saved" and the mediocre "coming out" novel "By the Light of My Father's Smile" (as a Walker novel it's standard fare; as a "coming out" story it's disappointing- lesser artist have done better)Walker returns with a collection of short stories that ranks among her novels "The Color Purple," "The Temple of My Familiar" and "Possessing the Secret to Joy." At first one may be tempted to think that these stories are merely Walker's version of the cliche "If it doesn't kill you, it will make you stronger" but these stories go deeper than that, particularly in "To My Young Husband- Memoir of a Marriage," the autobiographical piece in which Walker recounts her marriage to a white, Jewish civil rights lwayer in Mississippi during the '60's. There is an ache that runs through this piece that the reader actually feels as they're reading it. There is also the hilarious story "The Brotherhood of the Saved" in which the protaganist takes her elderly mother and aunts to see an adult film; deals with her relationship with her father and "The Brotherhood" who are meddling- sorry- trying to help save her uncle's soul before his death after years of descrimination. There is also the wonderful story of Orelia and John that follows "Memoir of a Marriage," in which a woman is contemplating an affair with a colleague, but instead tells her partner about her feelings and they work through them together, loving their way back to each other. This book assert that, as Walker told NPR in a recent interview, "you can bear the unbearable" because "the way forward is with a broken heart."

Rating:
Summary: peace with the changes life offers
Review: alice walker weaves her ideas very subtly into her stories. her books contain a philosophy but it manages to inhance not detract from the novel itself. The short stories in the way forward is with a broken heart are her most successful yet. She explores emotions and reactions to love so deep you can't imagine it going away. Her narrative is natural, you can taste her discriptions. The stories can be absolutely heartbreaking but they feel peaceful too. a wonderful book, I fully recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: peace with the changes life offers
Review: alice walker weaves her ideas very subtly into her stories. her books contain a philosophy but it manages to inhance not detract from the novel itself. The short stories in the way forward is with a broken heart are her most successful yet. She explores emotions and reactions to love so deep you can't imagine it going away. Her narrative is natural, you can taste her discriptions. The stories can be absolutely heartbreaking but they feel peaceful too. a wonderful book, I fully recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: For the Broken Hearted Among Us
Review: As always, Ms. Walker has turned out an elegant and touching piece of prose.

It is the first section of the text "To My Young Husband" that I am most attached. In this vignette Ms. Walker travels back to visit the places and times where and when her lost love was found. This section is so beautiful and touching that I actually wept when I read it.

Perhaps it is just the place I'm in at the moment, or perhaps because the emotions are so universal, but I feel a kinship to the author of "To My Young Husband." It will strike a chord with anyone who has loved and lost but can still look back with fondness and a smile.

I say "The Way Forward is With a Broken Heart" is perfect for Valentine's day and the broken hearted among us.

Rating:
Summary: For Walker Devotees Only
Review: Because Alice Walker is deemed "important" for American fiction, I guess her part-memoir will have some place for some scholar at some point. But it's not literature and does not even rank very high as part-memoir. It reads like a journal, not a great writer's journal, but an often shallow woman's musings on the ups and downs of her life mixed with a little fiction. I'm not sure it would have been published at all if it weren't authored by Walker.

Rating:
Summary: Kudos to Alice
Review: Every writer should be gifted with the same ability to impart thought and knowledge that Alice Walker does with her genius gift for the written and spoken word. This book once again proves that America has a writer whose very brilliance of thought makes her an example of "Must Reading." Her initial essay "To My Young Husband" is so beautifully moving and written that you feel like holding both of them in your heart. The rest of the book is basically fictional, with autobiographical overtones, and, like all of her other books, should be required reading for those interested in fine literature.

Rating:
Summary: Nothing new here
Review: Everything Alice Walker writes and talks about in this little volume, she's written and talked about before and the "before" texts such as The Color Purple and Possessing the Secret of Joy along with essays such as Am I Blue? say things a heck of a lot better than her latest work, The Way Forward is With a Broken Heart. A disappointing read overall.