When I heard about Broken, I got excited. I thoroughly
enjoyed Tussock and so Elizabeth Pulford’s writing was more than enough to make me want
to read it. But then I heard that it is narrated by a girl who is in a
coma and my interest spiked. Further, the cover is beautiful!
Zara is broken, the back cover tells us, she’s in a coma,
trapped in the world of her subconscious. We learn at the very beginning that
she was on the back of her brother’s motorcycle when there was an accident.
Jem, tragically, died immediately. Zara is in a coma, unaware of his death,
unaware of her own vegetative state. All she knows is the broken pieces of her
life, over-lapping, intersecting and scrolling through her mind without much
rhyme or reason.
She hears snippets of conversation from the hospital room,
she remembers things from the past, she knows Jem is missing and she needs to
find him. He is her secret keeper. He is the only one she told the whole story
to after she was kidnapped as a seven year old and kept in a cupboard for six
weeks. She desperately needs to find him. Has he disappeared into one of his
comics that he was so obsessed with? Armed with a pencil and an eraser she
draws her way in after him to find out.
Piece by piece Zara must sift through her past to unlock
secrets she has kept deep inside her.
I really liked this book. The fragmented text types, the
disjointed narration, the blurring of reality and fantasy within the comic
book; they all build to make a believable picture of a girl in a coma. At no
point did I feel it was gimmicky or forced. Even as great idea “narrated by a girl in a
coma” is, it is a great premise that could have easily fell flat by a
less skilled author. Once I had finished I didn’t think the story in Broken could have been told in
any other way. It all works.
This is a YA read that is different other things out there.
Find it on Goodreads
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