She Treads Softly: Broken Country

Thursday, February 6, 2025

Broken Country

Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall
3/4/25; 320 pages
Simon & Schuster

Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall is a very highly recommended domestic drama that is both a love story and morality tale.

It is 1968 and sheep farmers Frank and Beth Johnson are still mourning the death of their nine-year old son, Bobby two years earlier. They are out working with the new lambs in the Dorset countryside along side Jimmy, Franks younger brother, when a strange dog attacks and kills three lambs. Jimmy is quick to grab a gun and shoot the dog before he attacks any more lambs. Coming across the field is Gabriel Wolfe, the man Beth loved as a teenager who subsequently broke her heart years ago. Gabriel has returned to the village with his young son Leo and Beth is pulled back into Gabriel’s life.

Alternating chapters are set before, in 1955, when Beth and Gabriel met and fell in love. Also foreshadowed in a few chapters early on is a murder trial taking place in their present day. We know the person is close to Beth, although the victim isn't named until much later. This helps set a foreboding tone as readers know something is going to happen to someone.

This is an extremely well-written emotionally complex story of love, grief, guilt, and consequences. Beth is not a reliable narrator. She drops hints about what is and has happened but the full story isn't known until later in the plot. When some of the unsaid secrets/events are spoken and revealed it makes a huge difference in the novel. The grief of dealing with the lose of a child is a major part of the narrative.

Admittedly, I almost set Broken Country aside except for the fact that the quality of the writing is excellent. The focus is on the love story for much of the novel which is not a genre I normally read. Love triangles don't interest me. I didn't enjoy that storyline or Beth choices and actions which encompass a large part of the novel. What changed everything was the last part of the novel.

Broken Country may be most appreciated by those who enjoy romance novels and morally ambiguous characters, but those who like literary novels dealing with loss along with suspense will also appreciate it. 4.5
Thanks to Simon & Schuster for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.