The Break

Product Information

Okayyy. So, when I finished this book I seriously thought I liked it. I even went straight to GR to update that I had finished it, hit it with 4 stars, and then got in bed. That’s when it all changed. This might get a bit spoilerish, so if you plan on reading this ever and might get pissed that I spoiled something for you…mosey on past.

Break by Hannah Moskowitz | Goodreads

By the end I understood nothing, in fact I might have understood more by the middle of the book based on my own assumptions rather than whatever the hell the story line turned into... Less convincing were the parents. I had trouble accepting that they could be so very bad at looking after Jesse and dealing with his allergies. Or that they could be so blind to the fact that their other son was regularly doing himself serious damage. It’s not that I doubt such parents exist, they just seemed to be a bit over the top with their failing in this book. Authored by a senior in high school, this debut novel would make a veteran author proud. Jonah worries about a lot. He worries about his parents, worries about the fact his baby brother cries all the time, but most of all he worries about his younger brother, Jessie, who is severe and life-threatening allergies. After being hurt in a car accident, Jonah has started trying to break every bone in his body to make himself stronger. He is helped by his best friend, Naomi, who films him breaking his bones. As Jonah moves deeper and deeper into pain and breaking, the question is who is worrying enough about Jonah to help him.I've always loved the place my girl calls the Break. I used to walk through it in the summer. There is a path you can go along all the way to the edge of the city, and if you just look down at the grass, you might think you were in the country the whole way. Old people plant gardens there, big ones with tidy rows of corn and tomatoes, all nice and clean. You can't walk through it in the winter though. No one clears a way. In the winter, the Break is just a lake of wind and white, a field of cold and biting snow that blows up with the slightest gust. And when snow touches those raw Hydro wires they make this intrusive buzzing sound. It's constant and just quiet enough that you can ignore it, like a whisper you know is a voice but you can't hear the words. And even though they are more than three stories high, when it snows those wires feel close, low, and buzz a sound that is almost like music, just not as smooth. You can ignore it, it's just white noise, and some people can ignore things like that. Some people hear it and just get used to it. Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants has just arrived for her freshman year at Harvard and she’s slowly making friends – one, Svetlana, her Siberian classmate, and another, Ivan, an older mathematics student from Hungary. As Selin’s story spans cultures and continents, it brings together the joys, fears, insecurities and unknowns of discovering one’s self amid life and love. This wasn’t a happy book and I wouldn’t say that I had a connection to any of these characters but I did have a connection to the story in a whole though and it did open up my eyes and showed me how it is to live in a neighborhood like the one described in this book. I appreciated that she put a voice to them. For that I have hope.

Book Break Book Club - Pan Macmillan

And below the surface of the story, shared memories and metaphors link their two minds, as MacLaverty shows how decades of intimacy work to mingle consciousnesses as well as experience, and yet how far we remain unknowable to each other. In some ways the novel is a study in perspective, as the pair move between intimacy and distance.If I were Jonah, I think I would've strangled my 8 month old brother, Will. I can't imagine being in a house where a baby is crying, constantly, since the moment he was born. I'd go insane, I truly would. And then to top that off having a brother whose a year & a half younger than you who is basically allergic to everything and has reactions every other day that you love and want to protect more than anything? Yeah...insane. And I get Jonah's reasoning...a family being a unit and not individuals. When there's a problem, its not just your problem but everyone's problem in the family. And he feels that breaking bones makes them only stronger, so if he broke every bone in his body, he would be stronger not just physically but also in every way for his family. It's touching, it is. But disturbing, as well. At the front of the book there is a "TRIGGER WARNING: This book is about recovering and healing from violence. Contains scenes of sexual and physical violence, and depictions of vicarious trauma."

Break the Mould: How to Take Your Place in the World - WINNER

The Break is a barren field on an isolated strip of land outside the home of Stella a young Métis mother. One evening Stella looks out of her window and spots someone in trouble on the Break ― she calls the police to alert them to a possible crime.Winnipeg, North End: Als Stella in jener verschneiten Februarnacht aus dem Fenster schaut, scheint sie zu erstarren: Sie beobachtet die brutale Vergewaltigung und Misshandlung einer jungen Frau. Stella schafft es, die Polizei zu rufen - doch als diese vier Stunden später eintreffen, glauben sie ihr nicht. Die Polizei geht von einer Schlägerei unter Gang-Mitgliedern aus, eine Vergewaltigung sei bei diesem Wetter draußen doch gänzlich unwahrscheinlich. Aber Stella weiß, was sie gesehen hat. Und am nächsten Tag wird ein Mädchen mit schlimmen Verletzungen in die Notaufnahme gebracht... What is love? How do we practice it? And can we do it better? bell hooks explores the concept of love and the cultural norms and expectations surrounding it. In All About Love, hooks’ challenges the idea that romantic love is the ideal love. She opens readers up to the idea that love is something that goes beyond sex and desire; it is a healing, uniting force that can exist between all individuals, groups, and nations.