Broken for You

Thank you, thank you to my book club friends for introducing me to the novel Broken for You by Stephanie Kallos. What an amazing read. I stayed up late last night to finish it, then couldn't sleep afterward.

I enjoyed the tiny little things, like the odd change in perspective (the narrator brings the reader into the novel occationally by using "you," an unusual but interesting approach) and the well-placed quotes which caused me to stop and think: "Whether the stone hits the pitcher, or the pitcher hits the stone, it's going to be hard for the pitcher."

Even more, I enjoyed the big things--the integration of the Hollocaust and remembering those who lost their lives there; the ecclectic mix of characters, and the way their lives were intertwined (sometimes without the characters' knowledge); the relationships that develop in the novel, unpredicatable, necessary, lovely.

And, of course, to me, the main point:

Look then at the faces and bodies of people you love. The explicit beauty that comes not from the smoothness of skin or neutrality of espression, but from the web of experiences that has left its mark. Each face, each body is its own living fossilized record. A record of cats, combatants, difficult births; of accidents, cruelties, blessings. Reminders of folly, greeed indiscretion, impatience. A moment of time, of memory, preserved, internalized, and enshrined within and upon the body. You need not be told that these records are what render your beloved beautiful. If God exists, He is there, in the small, cast-off pieces, rough and random and no two alike.