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Breakable You Reading Guide
“For some readers, Brian Morton may still be an undiscovered treasure. He won’t be for long.”—Newsday
Award-winning novelist Brian Morton takes us to the heart of human longing in Breakable You. In scenes that are deeply moving yet unflinchingly frank, Morton presents three interlocking portraits of love and its potential to wound or to heal. First, we meet Adam Weller and his ex-wife, Eleanor, just as they are finalizing their divorce. Adam is a moderately successful novelist whose career is waning. In the much younger Thea, he has found someone who not only bolsters his ego, but whose media contacts help him maintain a foothold in the contemporary literary world. Eleanor, a psychologist, finds it hard to focus on her patients after Patrick, an old flame from decades ago, returns to her life, while the bitter memories of Adam’s unfaithfulness linger. Maud, Adam and Eleanor’s daughter, is a philosophy graduate student who embarks on a purely sexual affair. Being with her lover, Samir, is exhilarating, but he also provokes her deepest fears, which will become realized all too soon. Through these characters, Morton has created a tender ode to the dance between past and present.
The following questions and topics are designed to enhance your reading of Brian Morton’s Breakable You. We hope they will enrich your experience of this haunting novel.
Questions and Topics for Discussions
1. What were your first impressions of Adam and Eleanor? How did your perceptions of them change after that first encounter in the restaurant? What are the best and worst ideals they imparted to Maud?
2. Discuss the novel’s alternating points of view. What does this device say about the way we experience the world? Would greater honesty have hindered or helped the novel’s characters?
3. Why isn’t Adam generous? Is it painful for him to give money, applause, or loving conversation to others? Is he fearful and insecure? Or is self-centeredness simply ingrained in his personality? How does he manage to convince so many people that he is considerate?
4. Samir wonders why he feels attracted to a woman who, at first, makes him feel so defeated. What is the nature of the attraction between Maud and Samir? Do their distinct ancestries have much impact on their relationship? How does their approach to sex reflect their emotional needs?
5. How do Eleanor and Patrick each remember the past? In chapter 32, as Eleanor revisits “the taking of Patrick” from her sister, what does she also recall about herself? Have Eleanor and Patrick changed significantly over the decades?
6. Compare the novel’s three prominent pairs: Adam and Thea, Maud and Samir, Eleanor and Patrick. What common thread runs through these relationships? How do the novel’s characters evaluate the costs and benefits of love?
7. The novel’s title reflects human vulnerabilities. How much of the brokenness among the characters is due to fate, and how much of it is due to the intentional acts of others? Is any of the brokenness self-inflicted?
8. Why does Maud feel safest with Ralph? Does her presence in his life help him or hurt him?
9. What messages and beliefs mean the most to Maud as she reads philosophy?
10. Discuss the way New York City almost becomes a character in Breakable You, from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade to Zabar’s on the Upper West Side. What characteristics make the city an appropriate setting for the novel’s unique cast?
11. How does Jeffrey Lipkin’s literary crush propel the novel? Would Adam have stolen Izzy’s novel in any case? What does the party scene in chapter 22 demonstrate about the publishing world, and other worlds in which art and commerce intersect?
12. Chapter 67 contains an aphorism from Kafka: “One must not cheat anybody. Not even the world of its triumph.” How would the novel’s characters define the concept of the world’s triumph? Is Adam the only cheater in Breakable You?
13. How do the novel’s characters respond to devastation? How might David’s future be shaped by the knowledge of his father’s death, and the death of his half-sister Zahra? What has been the most shattering experience in your life? Did you recover from it fully?
14. In a review of one of Morton’s previous novels, A Window Across the River, a critic for The New York Times wrote that the main characters “are wonderfully well drawn, an angular, asymmetrical pair whose love has nothing to do with happy endings.” In what ways does the notion of asymmetry in love also apply to Breakable You? Do happy endings cause love stories to seem unrealistic? What observations has Morton made about creativity and human nature throughout his fiction?
About the Author
BRIAN MORTON is the author of three previous novels, including Starting Out in the Evening, which won the Koret Jewish Book Award and was chosen by Salon as a favorite book of the year, and A Window Across the River, which was a Today Book Club selection. He teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and New York University and lives in New York.
Copyright © 20006 Harcourt, Inc.
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