The Bowl Is Already Broken

by Mary Kay Zuravleff

Book Overview

A big, rewarding novel about art, politics, family, terrorism, courage, and happiness. Promise Whittaker, the diminutive but decisive acting director of the National Museum of Asian Art, is pregnant again--and that's just the beginning of her difficulties. Her mentor, the previous director, suddenly walked away from his job with no explanation, and now is on a dig somewhere in the Taklamakan desert. Her favorite curator has dropped their newest treasure,...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374115710
• ISBN13: 9780374115715
• Release Date: April 2005
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
• Length: 424 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Wonderful!

I am a longstanding fan of Mary Kay Zuravleff's writing. I loved her wonderfully inventive first book, The Frequency of Souls, and her current novel also does not disappoint. This is a book to savor and take your time with, for The Bowl Was Already Broken is original, witty, warm-hearted, and also full of the most interesting and amazing information. Zuravleff writes about the art world in a way that is at once curatorial, sensitive, and hysterically funny. Her depiction of family life and happiness will warm your soul. The characters in this novel are like quirky friends, and when I finished the book, I found that I cared about them and felt as if I wanted to know what was going to happen to them beyond the last page. Have you ever felt a bit sad that you were getting close to the end of a book? That's the way I felt about this book--I was sad to finish it--an indication of how much I enjoyed reading The Bowl Was Already Broken.

Zuravleff and Promise Pull Their Weight

In the late seventies and early eighties, when I was cutting my teeth on modern and then contemporary literature, I complained frequently to my male friends about the lofty status of male writers like Ernest Hemingway and John Updike. When they write about identity crises and mid-life angst, I complained, their work is viewed widely as pertinent and significant, yet when women write about such things, their work is often diminished with the label "domestic novel" and the suggestion that such subject matter is barely more than soap opera material. Why the discrepancy - the disconnect in perception of men's and women's lives, male and female writers? Many of my male friends at that time hadn't read many novels by women authors, though I still suspect that they wouldn't consider a novel like Kate Chopin's The Awakening or Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway as pulling the weight that say, The Sun Also Rises, might. While I still don't have the answer to this fundamental question about men's and women's perceptions of literature, I'm happy to report that Mary Kay Zuravleff's The Bowl is Already Broken is a novel that pulls a lot of weight in its presentation of a heroine, Promise Whittaker, whose life is replete with domestic crises on the personal and professional front as well as the realities of international terrorism. It is this complement of the quotidian and world headline fodder that makes the book a satisfying and thought-provoking read. Promise Whittaker is both a Rumi scholar and a mother and wife. By day she studies Rumi pages at the Museum of Asian Art, a part of the National Institution of Science and Art in Washington, D.C. By night she flings pasta into bowls for her family - husband Leo, a worker for Amnesty International, and two less-than-perfect children, Felix and Lydia. Her home is in shambles, both literally and figuratively; her babysitter is ready to run or to receive the ax, and each time Promise returns to the house, one more thing has structurally fallen apart or come unglued. When Promise is asked to become acting director of the museum after the former director, her beloved mentor, takes off to dig up history in the Taklamakan Desert, she knows almost immediately that she's in over her head, especially after a variety of strange symptoms and the results from an expired early pregnancy test lead her to believe that she's pregnant with an unexpected child. For this reader, the realism of the "unexpected" is particularly powerful in terms of what it says about the lives of women. Promise is stretched, her short body metaphorically strung on a rack, limbs pulled intensely in opposite directions. She becomes an archetype for all women who are stretched in too many directions as she is forced to juggle the imminent closing of the museum, a prospect that has been kept from her for too long, the startling news that her mentor has been taken hostage, and the idiosyncratic challenges that face any mother with young childre

I didn't want it to end

I have a friend who will only allow himself to read one page a night when he's down to the last 15 pages of a really good book. I never could understand this practice before I read "The Bowl Is Already Broken." But, I confess, I couldn't do it. I greedily devoured every word. Each character revels in and is held prisoner by his or her own obsessions. Even though the characters exist in the microcosm of museum life, this book is such a full story in the world. While revealing the inner workings of a museum, the author also unravels the stories of objects; the meaning expressed in the fabulous decorations of Chinese porcelains as well as their cultural and historical significance. But these descriptions are intertwined with the action, and add significantly to the depth of the characters and the plot. So, when the former director takes off on an archaeological expedition in central Asia, the worlds of art and politics collide. The politics work so well precisely because the author avoids being dull or preachy. This is a clever novel full of beauty and wit.

Great reading!

I laughed, I cried.... You'll know this book is special upon reading the first sentence: "When the dust settled, there was only dust, and the Chinese bowl rested in pieces at the bottom of the museum steps." The Bowl is Already Broken is rich with wisdom and humor, and is both topical and timeless. It took me to a different world and offered a new perspective on this one. I loved it.

Inspired!

Powerful and affecting, this brilliantly crafted novel engages your mind, heart, and soul, effortlessly interweaving domestic drama, ancient philosophy, love story, and call to action. Exquisite porcelain from China and calligraphies from Japan are displayed in the elegantly marbled galleries of the fictional National Museum of Asian Art in Washington, D.C. While to the public crossing the threshold, the museum's hushed spaces convey a reverential and timeless serenity, behind the scenes the staff is in turmoil. A curator has dropped an irreplaceable Chinese porcelain down the museum's grand staircase and the director has resigned. The internal candidate who has been appointed acting director finds she is juggling the vying attentions not only of her friends who are now her staff, but also her family, and her blossoming pregnancy. Passions, of all sorts, drive the men and women in whose hands are placed the world's artistic heritage. The museum's staff take it as their duty to share their enthusiasm for the art and culture of two-thirds of the world's people. But the powerful symbolism imbued in these cultural masterpieces is not lost on America's political elite either. Contrasting views on the importance of understanding different cultural perspectives are reflected throughout this novel. A former staff member at the Smithsonian Institution, author Mary Kay Zuravleff delights us with gems of insight into what inspires those who hold custody of the world's greatest art treasures. Her beguiling prose illuminates both the vast arid deserts of Central Asia and the cacophonous world of family life in D.C. with affecting clarity. Part cultural observer, part Sufi mystic, this gifted storyteller has woven a tale for our times.