Broken by Daniel Clay

Until that fateful afternoon, Skunk Cunningham had been a normal little girl, playing on the curb in front of her house. Rick Buck-ley had been a normal geeky teen-ager, hosing off his brand-new car. Bob Oswald had been a normal sociopathic single father of five slutty daughters, charging furiously down the side-walk. Then Bob was beating Rick to a bloody pulp, right there in the Buckleys' driveway, and life on Drummond Square was never the same again.

Inspired by Harper Lee's classic "To Kill a Mockingbird," Clay's brilliantly observed and darkly funny novel follows the sudden unraveling of a sub-urban community after a single act of thoughtless cruelty.

I picked this book up for $4.00 at a used book store. The cover is what drew me in, I love it. Then, I read that it was inspired by 'To Kill a Mockingbird', one of my favorites. This is a classic case of 'don't judge a book by it's cover'. I actually want my $4.00 back.

The synopsis made it sound like a pretty good book. A neighborhood mystery. I started reading it and saw that the main character and narrator was in a coma, that just intrigued me more. Sadly, that was the high point and that was only about 10 pages.

The book isn't structured at all. There are no chapters and it would switch stories without even starting a new paragraph. There was absolutely no flow to it.

The characters were interesting but everything else made it hard for me to care and really get into the book.

And don't even get me started on the fact that this was inspired by 'To Kill a Mockingbird'. This book is in no way comparable to that classic piece of American literature. The closest the author got to it was the names of the characters, some of them did coincide with 'Mockingbird' but that is it. 'Mockingbird' went deep into social issues and it had guts, drama and mystery. This had some mystery but not much. I had it figured out before I was half way through the book.

Broken is an unpleasant story that shows how violence only inspires more violence. It's not an enjoyable book at all.

1 out of 5 stars