Half Broken Things

by Morag Joss

Book Overview

A gripping tale of psychological suspense perfect for the readership of Minette Walters and Ruth Rendell, Half Broken Things is a novel that peers into the lives of three dangerously lost people...and the ominous haven they find when they find each other.

Jean is a house sitter at the end of a dreary career. Steph is nine months pregnant and on the run. And Michael is a thief. Through a mixture of deceit, good luck, and misfortune, these...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0440242444
• ISBN13: 9780440242444
• Release Date: July 2006
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.77 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.3" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Reminded me of Shirley Jackson's "We Have Always Lived In The Castle"

Jackson's classic novel of isolation and murder and madness among those with few ties to reality came to mind as I read HALF BROKEN THINGS. This is the type of book you "settle into" -- it doesn't sweep you away like much modern commerical fiction. But once you settle in, you're in for a great story with a perfect ending! Be sure and visit Jackson's CASTLE...and Ruth Rendell's A SIGHT FOR SORE EYES if you liked this book!

Fragile: Handle With Care

Three lonely, damaged social outcasts happen upon each other in a big, empty country house that does not belong to them, and together they create something like a family. Their fantasy existence cannot last, of course, and when harsh reality intrudes in their "home," they take desperate measures to protect and preserve the only happiness they've ever known. This portrait of quiet horror and escalating madness will leave you feeling shocked, drained--and oddly uplifted. Morag Joss is the latest addition to a select group of suspense writers, the ones whose mysteries are set in the delicate landscapes of the human mind and heart. This strange, compelling novel will remind readers of Ruth Rendell, Minette Walters, and the late Patricia Highsmith. Yes, she's that good. If you like those writers, try this. PS: Her new novel, PUCCINI'S GHOSTS, is also very good.

"I do not plan to offer excuses for what we have done."

Jean, a sixty-four-year-old spinster, is working her final job as a house-sitter before she retires, tending the lovely, large Walden Manor, not far from Bath. The owners, who will be in Europe from January through August, have locked certain rooms, attested to the inventory, and established rules governing what can and cannot be done on the premises. Knowing this is her last job, Jean decides to flout the rules, living as if she were truly the lady of the manor, opening locked rooms, the wine cellar and freezer, and the family's personal spaces. Within a week, she has invited her "son" Michael to move in, and he has brought with him the pregnant Steph, who is about to give birth. Bonding into a close-knit "family," these social outcasts make themselves at home--for the first time in their lives. Jean, writing a first person narrative at the end of her stay, instantly creates suspense when she reveals that there are "only eleven more days," and that she "does not plan to offer excuses for what we have done." Through flashbacks, we come to know her family background, learning of her childhood, her psychological and emotional abuse, her dysfunctional relationship with her demanding Mother, and her need for closeness. Michael, her "son," now "working" as a thief, is similarly needy, having survived an equally horrific childhood. Steph, the third lost soul, is an abused teenager--pregnant, rejected, and homeless. The characters, though off-beat when taken separately, become absurd when they start behaving as a family. Living apart from society's rules, they begin acting to protect themselves and their lifestyle at Walden Manor. Jean speaks for all when she says, "I would do anything, absolutely anything, to keep us all together," and the reader has reason to believe her. As the characters' self-protective actions become more extreme, the novel changes from suspenseful psychological horror to the blackest of black-humored farce--some of the darkest humor I've read since Molly Keane's Time After Time. Joss has filled the novel with minute descriptions of her odd characters in the novel's early pages, creating chilling suspense while stimulating reader empathy with the characters. In the second half of the novel, however, the reader realizes that these characters are more than just "odd," as they engage in increasingly outrageous scenes. The pace accelerates, and the author's mordant humor is fully unleashed. Coincidences, ironies, understatements, and absurdity combine as Joss guides the novel into that twilight zone between genuine suspense and genuine humor, keeping the reader smiling from the tenterhooks. The novel's themes of time, family, home, and the need for love are fully developed--in unique, unexpected, and darkly humorous ways. Mary Whipple

"I would do anything, absolutely anything, to keep us all together."

Jean, a sixty-four-year-old spinster, is working her final job as a house-sitter before she retires, tending the lovely, large Walden Manor, not far from Bath. The owners, who will be in Europe from January through August, have locked certain rooms, attested to the inventory, and established rules governing what can and cannot be done on the premises. Knowing this is her last job, Jean decides to flout the rules, living as if she were truly the lady of the manor, opening locked rooms, the wine cellar and freezer, and the family's personal spaces. Within a week, she has invited her "son" Michael to move in, and he has brought with him the pregnant Steph, who is about to give birth. Bonding into a close-knit "family," these social outcasts make themselves at home--for the first time in their lives. Jean, writing a first person narrative at the end of her stay, instantly creates suspense when she reveals that there are "only eleven more days," and that she "does not plan to offer excuses for what we have done." Through flashbacks, we come to know her family background, learning of her childhood, her psychological and emotional abuse, her dysfunctional relationship with her demanding Mother, and her need for closeness. Michael, her "son," now "working" as a thief, is similarly needy, having survived an equally horrific childhood. Steph, the third lost soul, is an abused teenager--pregnant, rejected, and homeless. The characters, though off-beat when taken separately, become absurd when they start behaving as a family. Living apart from society's rules, they begin acting to protect themselves and their lifestyle at Walden Manor. Jean speaks for all when she says, "I would do anything, absolutely anything, to keep us all together," and the reader has reason to believe her. As the characters' self-protective actions become more extreme, the novel changes from suspenseful psychological horror to the blackest of black-humored farce--some of the darkest humor I've read since Molly Keane's Time After Time. Joss has filled the novel with minute descriptions of her odd characters in the novel's early pages, creating chilling suspense while stimulating reader empathy with the characters. In the second half of the novel, however, the reader realizes that these characters are more than just "odd," as they engage in increasingly outrageous scenes. The pace accelerates, and the author's mordant humor is fully unleashed. Coincidences, ironies, understatements, and absurdity combine as Joss guides the novel into that twilight zone between genuine suspense and genuine humor, keeping the reader smiling from the tenterhooks. The novel's themes of time, family, home, and the need for love are fully developed--in unique, unexpected, and darkly humorous ways. n Mary Whipple

Powerful and haunting

What desperate lengths would you go to for love --- especially if you've been forever deprived of it? This provocative question --- and its potentially disturbing ramifications --- is the explosive kindling that ignites a slow-burning fire engulfing the three bereft souls in HALF BROKEN THINGS. In this dark psychological thriller, awarded a prestigious Silver Dagger Award by the Crime Writers' Association, Scottish author Morag Joss explores the bottomless depths of human loneliness when the lives of three incongruous misfits collide in the British countryside. On the surface, Jean, Michael and Steph appear to share little in common other than marginalized lives and childhoods marked by abandonment, abuse and disillusionment. Sixty-four-year-old housesitter Jean has forged a meager and solitary existence out of watching over the beloved possessions of others during their absences. Meanwhile, friendless and penniless loner Michael is reduced to stealing religious artifacts from churches in order to subsist on canned soup in a dingy, freezing apartment. In a fated encounter, he crosses paths with the pregnant and jobless young Steph at the exact moment her lifelong inertia suddenly gives way to an impulsive decision to flee her abusive boyfriend. Short on options, she foists herself on the nearest person at hand, who happens to be Michael. Preoccupied with his own dire circumstances, he reluctantly acquiesces into letting her settle into his apartment and eventually into his heart. Meanwhile, Jean faces the specter of mandatory retirement after her current eight-month contract ends housesitting the stately Walden Manor. The bleak prospect of being put out to pasture weakens her grip on reality and she indulgently assumes proxy ownership of the house, taking inappropriate liberties with its possessions. But even this misguided attempt to achieve a sense of belonging is not enough to stave off her emptiness, so she invents a son whom she'd given up for adoption and places an advertisement seeking to find him. When Michael, given up for adoption by a mother he never knew, chances upon the ad, the wheels of fate are set again in motion. Though he realizes immediately upon meeting Jean that she cannot be his mother, the desperation of both supercedes reality and this implicit acknowledgment forms the basis for their surrogate family. Walden Manor draws Michael and Steph in with welcoming and bountiful arms, providing much-needed sustenance and a respite from their hand-to-mouth financial struggles. Insulated from the pressures of the outside world, the incongruous new family creates an idyllic-seeming existence until reality slowly and inexorably intercedes. The gradual unraveling of their elaborately concocted fantasy world is accelerated by the unexpected appearance of someone from Michael's past and the impending return of the rightful owners of Walden Manor. These encroaching threats set in motion a dramatic and irrevocable chain of events that