Broken Glass Paperback – May 18, 2010

This is a quirky book with lots of clever pivots to literature, arts, politics, popular culture, religion, etc. In fact the best parts of the book are when Mabanckou goes off on a jazz like riff where he ties in unrelated things in clever ways. Here's a description of a fist fight between Broken and another damaged patron, other customers gather to witness, "....because I was Mohammed Ali and he was George Foreman, and I was floating like a butterfly, I was stinging like a bee, and he was a flat footed vegetable....." Here's a passage comparing a charismatic shaman to another showman, "...Hitchcock was a real life-size character, a talented man, a guy who could make your spine shiver just with a few birds, or a rear window, he could turn you into a psycho with a single characteristic little trick....."Broken Glass is the name of the narrator. He's a patron/hanger on/employee at the Credit Gone West Bar in the Congo. The bar owner, Stubborn Snail, asks Broken to create a chronicle of the other inhabitants. Since Broken is a former educator who's fallen on tough times he's a natural at interviewing and documenting others while keeping up with his red wine quotient. Obviously the book is rife with metaphor and it's mostly funny in a tragic way until Broken begins to tell his own story. Then it's depressing and everymanish.Mabanckou's sentences begin with small letters. Only names and places start with capitals. He doesn't use periods, words fall over one another separated by commas. Sadness repeats itself and never ends. Tragedy doesn't change, the same stories repeat. This was a difficult book to enjoy though it was clever and insightful and for all I know, in my ignorance, indicative of Africa.

This is a hard read, but worthwhile. There are a lot of references to French and African literature and politics that I'm sure I missed. And there are some pretty tough scenes as well, but there's still a lot of humor and this man know how to write. I had to stay with it all the way.

Call this a literary feat, a tragedy a good ramble...more than anything I found the narrator picked me up and wouldn't let me go until the last page. A short but powerful novel, full of literary/cultural allusions and laugh out loud, totally absurd scenes that form the most memorable parts of this book.

I loved this book! I loved this book! I loved this book!I loved this book! I loved this book! I loved this book! Seriously though. I loved it!

This book is told in one of the most remarkable voices I've seen in a minute, and it has the best piss scene ever written.If you don't buy it, it's because you're uppity.

Great book, would highly recommend.

the book and story is soo bad, no one in our book club could finish it.

Ugh.

I tried but this story line lost me. I couldn’t get into it! I will try again in the Spring as it was very strongly recommended and see if there was something I was missing. Susan

Good quality, quick.

This book has the worst introduction possible as Uzodinma Iweala gets the meaning of the book completely wrong and in introducing the book misleads the reader creats confusion and a disservice to the book. This book is about broken glass who is the protagonist and who does not care and just wants to have a good time. He also considers himself as having a good understanding of great writers and writing because he has read many books and keeps a big collection of them which he loves. As he thinks many of the great writers were and are great consumers of alcohol. He therefore by drinking a lot of alcohol not only has a good time but he thinks he is at the same level as his champion writers as he is told this by his friend and bar owner Stubburn Snail. This is in contrast with the introduction which suggest broken glass is a shuttered man and therefore has turned to alcohol and become alcoholic. Stubburn Snail asks him to write a book about his bar and its patrons in any way he likes which he dose. But he does not follow any literary rules by sticking to the rules of writing or prose or reason etc. His answere to this that this book has no beginning or ending or proper sense is because that is what life is. That is again in contrast to what the introduction to the book says that the writing is intoxicating the writer actually says the opposite.

This novel is nothing like I have ever read before, it took a while to get into it due to the writing style and absence of full stops, but once I got into the flow of it I really enjoyed it. It feels like a very intelligent book, with numerous literary references (the majority of which went over my head!), but is also a very entertaining story and a strange combination of both hilarious and tragic. Would highly recommend if you are looking for something out of the ordinary to read.

I was and am unsure about this except I read it from start to finish "in one sitting" - excluding coffee etc...reviews suggested a level of experience I couldn't share as, apparently, the references to French culture and literature were more intense than I could experience in only recognising names. However I enjoyed it and some scenes remain in my mind - not a bad thing to say about a book