Review: A Broken Thing By Marlin Barton

A Broken Thing represents a fragmented narrative to mirror the fragmentation of the family and the different multifaceted relationships happening within a family was also explored. The shifting points of view were able to provide the different perceptions of the truth among the characters.

Set in Riverfield, A Broken Thing revolves around the breakup of families depicted in short stories of in The Dry Well of the same author. A Broken Thing is centered on the Anderson family. The novel is told in multiple first-person points of view, the voices coming from the principle members of the family which are essentially the mother, father, older brother as well as the younger brother Seth – the central figure of the story.

The story represents a fragmented narrative to mirror the fragmentation of the family and the different multifaceted relationships happening within a family was also explored. The shifting points of view were able to provide the different perceptions of the truth among the characters.

Good times don't last forever for this 1970s Alabama family. An unforgiving past as well as a dark secret soon tarnishes the love that holds the family together. The story is told by different family members, especially young Seth. His innocence contradicts with the depression of a mother plagued by her own inadequacies, the confusion of a father trying to make up for past mistakes, and the rebellion of an older brother angry with a life he was not able to control and could not put into place.

In the story of A Broken Thing, Barton incorporates the dimension of mercy, the mutual forgiveness of failures by family members who, finally, were able to discover ways to comprehend they could not live without each other. In the story the characters that were portrayed were alcoholics, beer guzzlers, thieves, child abusers, child arsonists, poverty stricken farmers, husbands and wives who could not express to each other their inner feelings, fathers and sons who are not and do not regard and place each other with respect, animal murderers, and racists both white and black.

Although the characters appear to be at their worst, it must be taken into account that at least the central characters, for the most part, are also good people who are just flawed just like everyone else.

In this particular story, the writer was able to take the reader deep enough into who the characters are and he was able to present and have the reader see why they do what they do. In the subject of compromised love and truth, through the realization and even conflicts that were existed between family members, their realization of the truth and the eventual importance of love for each was able to turn things to a different light.

A Broken Thing is considered a clean paradox. The writer creates the characters, but then has to be true to who they are and couldn’t have them do something they're not capable of. However the inner strength those characters have allowed them forgive themselves or others, creating a meaningful pause to end the story.