Broken as Things Are

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Summary: Fascinating, profound, and heartwarming: a great read
Review: Martha Witt's first novel will soon be lauded throughout the world as a classic. A heart-felt story of youngsters growing up in the American South, Broken As Things Are tells the tale of the extarordinary Morgan-Lee and her oddly withdrawn older brother. Morgan-Lee is the only person who is able to understand and engage Ginx. Sharing a secret language, they escape together into a make-believe world. Unable to articulate his emotions, except through garbled, nosensical words, Ginx becomes increasingly disturbed by his sister's desire for friendships beyond the closed circle of their sibling love. The Summer in which this story takes place leaves Morgan Lee with the choice between her love for her brother and a life without him.
Against this tragic, but heartwarming backdrop, Broken As Things Are nonetheless succeeds in producing some beautifully light and moving moments, such as the children's growing friendship with the strange Sweety-Boy and her half brother Jacob. These two fascinating characters offer some truly tender and insightful commentary on the nature of childhood, imagination, and the inevitable and necessary pain of separation. And with Morgan-Lee, we follow her path from childhood to adulthood through her genuine inquisitiveness, and her eagerness to learn and feel.
Witt's writing is excellent, as it weaves from one interwoven part of the story to the next. Along the way, we meet a cornucopia of different characters and viewpoints. Each is brought to life through context and vivid descriptions.
Above all, Martha Witt's masterpiece is a story of growth and progress, even in the most complicated of experiences, childhood. Thought-provoking and inspiring.

Rating:
Summary: Youth Remembered
Review: I couldn't put this book down. Anyone who wants to remember the joy of growing up (and its complementary hardships and pain) must get their hands on this book. I left it with a great sense of nostalgia and with a feeling of having learned so much about who I once was.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing read
Review: I love coming of age stories & I love anything written that takes palce in the South but this book was a let down. I'm not sure why but I did not enjoy this book. I think the two friends Sweety Boy & Jacob ruined the book for me. I wasn't prepared for the hint of incest & just didn't like their characters. I felt sorry for Morgan Lee. Her disfunctional family wasn't a lot of help to her.

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Summary: Can't wait to re-read...
Review: I was completely immersed and engrossed by the compelling, unusual characters and the engaging story. Most of all, I enjoyed Ms. Witt's beautiful use of language and metaphors. Now that I have finished the story, I am eager to re-read in order to more fully appreciate the 'secret language.'

Rating:
Summary: Engaging, poetic, and affirming; a great story well told
Review: Martha Witt's Broken as Things Are is an engaging, imaginative story about the love and the sorrow of childhood. Witt's prose is precise, very often poetic, and with it she tells the story of Morgan Lee and her brother Ginx. Ginx communicates with words that are chosen not for their meaning, but their emotional resonance, as in `Portent, Bilous, Mustard, Enough'. And slowly, surely, detail by detail, Witt takes us deeper into the unique dilemmas of their childhood until we too not only begin to understand Ginx, but also come to appreciate this gift of using language to `sound ourselves out'. For all the revealing attention that is paid to dysfunction, the novel is also, at points, wonderfully funny. This blend of the tragic and the comic is wrapped into a novel that explores tragedy but is ultimately triumphant, if only because reading it is, like childhood itself, an experience in which all of our emotions are deeply felt.

Rating:
Summary: Poetic language, unforgettable characters
Review: Reading this book is like finding hidden treasure. The relationship between Morgan Lee and Gynx is like no other that I've read, and the language is amazing. I'm so glad I bought the book. It's by far the best book I've read this summer.

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Summary: Emotion
Review: Truly inspiring and heartwarming. To be reread each time you yearn to feel emotions.

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Summary: If you love beautiful prose, read this.
Review: Wonderfully strange and original coming-of-age story of a young Southern girl too attached to her autistic brother whose maturity is chronicled in her power with words. The novel soars, but I also loved its hilariously droll tone throughout while the narrator pokes fun at her family,the town's seediness and its "legends".

The narrator and the brother relishing the sounds of language to describe the tone of their emotional environs is such an original gift to the reader. It's so refreshing to read a literary, coming-of-age novel that does not rely on self-conscious irony, cultural references or smirking world-weariness and to find an author that has such command of her prose; the prose just shimmers. The book really transports you to a world you could never imagine on your own.
Glad I stumbled upon this book.