Broken

August 15, 2013
A novel with graphic elements chronicles a girl's mental and emotional journeys as she works through a childhood trauma while in a coma. Fifteen-year old Zara is in a coma as a result of the motorcycle accident that took the life of her brother, Jem. The first-person narration shifts between comatose Zara, as she hears and mentally responds to the people in her hospital room, and her adventures in the world of her brother's favorite comic book, Hoodman. Strangely, Zara does not appear to know that she is in a coma, despite her immobility and blindness and the fact that no one responds to her. Much of the action within the comic-book world feels similarly disconnected as, Harold-like, Zara draws herself in and out of various situations, searching for Jem and evading the comic's villain, Morven. Morven's depiction, distressingly, borrows from stereotypical tropes of the Other, with dark skin and a hooked nose, a stark contrast to the blonde, fair-skinned protagonist. As Zara's back story unfolds, readers learn that in order to come out of her coma, she must confront the demons from her childhood--a fictively tidy solution that feels both illogical and contrived, given the coma's cause. In the end, this story attempts to tackle serious issues but fails to grasp the gravity of its subject matter. Disappointing. (Graphic hybrid fiction. 14 & up)

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January 1, 2014

Gr 7 Up-After a tragic motorcycle crash, 18-year-old Jem is killed and his 15-year-old sister, Zara, is left in a coma. While comatose, artist Zara is aware of what her devastated parents and others are saying. In her suspended state, she is able to enter the world of Jem's favorite comic book to search for him. Once there, she realizes that she can control what happens by using a pencil and eraser to change locations and escape trouble, but still she cannot find Jem. As she searches for him, her memories flash back to when she was kidnapped at age seven by a deranged man. She was not physically harmed. Eventually she managed to break free and made subsequent visits to a psychologist. Nonetheless, the experience haunts Zara's present. Despite an attempt to keep all the plotlines straight by using different fonts and inserting several comic-book panels throughout, the story is more confusing than satisfying. Frequent choppiness in the writing plus limited character and plot development do not help. Students looking for a more effective blend of comics and prose should try Cecil Castellucci's The Year of the Beasts (Roaring Brook, 2012) and Swati Avasthi's Chasing Shadows (Knopf, 2013) instead.-Diane P. Tuccillo, Poudre River Public Library District, CO

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