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What desperate lengths would you go to for love --- especially if you've been forever deprived of it? This provocative question --- and its potentially disturbing ramifications --- is the explosive kindling that ignites a slow-burning fire engulfing the three bereft souls in HALF BROKEN THINGS. In this dark psychological thriller, awarded a prestigious Silver Dagger Award by the Crime Writers' Association, Scottish author Morag Joss explores the bottomless depths of human loneliness when the lives of three incongruous misfits collide in the British countryside.
On the surface, Jean, Michael and Steph appear to share little in common other than marginalized lives and childhoods marked by abandonment, abuse and disillusionment. Sixty-four-year-old housesitter Jean has forged a meager and solitary existence out of watching over the beloved possessions of others during their absences. Meanwhile, friendless and penniless loner Michael is reduced to stealing religious artifacts from churches in order to subsist on canned soup in a dingy, freezing apartment.
In a fated encounter, he crosses paths with the pregnant and jobless young Steph at the exact moment her lifelong inertia suddenly gives way to an impulsive decision to flee her abusive boyfriend. Short on options, she foists herself on the nearest person at hand, who happens to be Michael. Preoccupied with his own dire circumstances, he reluctantly acquiesces into letting her settle into his apartment and eventually into his heart.
Meanwhile, Jean faces the specter of mandatory retirement after her current eight-month contract ends housesitting the stately Walden Manor. The bleak prospect of being put out to pasture weakens her grip on reality and she indulgently assumes proxy ownership of the house, taking inappropriate liberties with its possessions. But even this misguided attempt to achieve a sense of belonging is not enough to stave off her emptiness, so she invents a son whom she'd given up for adoption and places an advertisement seeking to find him.
When Michael, given up for adoption by a mother he never knew, chances upon the ad, the wheels of fate are set again in motion. Though he realizes immediately upon meeting Jean that she cannot be his mother, the desperation of both supercedes reality and this implicit acknowledgment forms the basis for their surrogate family. Walden Manor draws Michael and Steph in with welcoming and bountiful arms, providing much-needed sustenance and a respite from their hand-to-mouth financial struggles. Insulated from the pressures of the outside world, the incongruous new family creates an idyllic-seeming existence until reality slowly and inexorably intercedes.
The gradual unraveling of their elaborately concocted fantasy world is accelerated by the unexpected appearance of someone from Michael's past and the impending return of the rightful owners of Walden Manor. These encroaching threats set in motion a dramatic and irrevocable chain of events that hurtles the novel toward its final shocking crescendo.
The carefully calibrated manner in which the author allows events to unfold creates an ominous and pervasive tension as she descends us into greater and greater depths of suspense and disbelief with each turn of the page. Equally as skillful, Joss manages to make each increasingly appalling occurrence appear frighteningly justifiable given the circumstances. Just as she crafts a narrative that both defies belief yet seems completely plausible, she uses that same gifted sleight of hand on her characters, who simultaneously repel us by their desperate actions while also inspiring empathy and even likeability.
While Morag Joss has written three previously well-received books in her Sara Selkirk mystery series, HALF BROKEN THINGS is her first stand-alone effort and it firmly cements her reputation as a master of psychological suspense on par with Minette Walters and Ruth Rendell. Her ability to penetrate deep into the hearts, minds and motivations of her characters enables her to portray the doomed inevitability of their half-broken lives to powerful and haunting effect.
--- Reviewed by Joni Rendon
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