This was a Traveling Sisters group read that I had the pleasure of reading along with Lindsay, Susanne, Diane and Dem.

The Break: British Book Awards Author of the Year 2022

The themes of pain, abuse, trauma and the stories & fear that we are forced to carry as women and people of colour were very well explored and the language (despite the constant repetition of the word 'gross' which bugged me slightly) was beautiful, simple and poetic.Fiction is capable of helping us to comprehend difference and otherness, and The Break offers clear insight into people struggling to secure a place in the world." -Candace Fertile "Quill and Quire "

The Break: FEATURED ON THE NETFLIX SERIES TOUR DE FRANCE The Break: FEATURED ON THE NETFLIX SERIES TOUR DE FRANCE

While the violent characters in the novel are despicable, it is a testament to Vermette’s skill that they also appear pitiable. The Break is a condemnation of reprehensible individual behaviour, but also of a broader society incapable of dealing effectively with problems of addiction, poverty, homelessness, and despair. Vermette isn’t laying blame: she simply details the tragedy of cultural loss, prejudice, family breakdown, and violence for her readers to assess. Karen a busy mother between work, her husband and her two children wants a break. And for a friend, Karen, is telling her about a little guest house where she can be by herself. Singh contemplates how she and her daughter can live ethically in our current social and political systems, and how they can change them. Taking up race, physical vulnerability, queer parenting, and more, The Breaks is a wide-ranging, invigorating mix of memoir and cultural critique.” —Book RiotSet in New York, their friend and talent agent Harrison Russell, and June has big ambitions. June begins working at Harrison’s agency, signs on to babysit for Rowan and Gabe, and the trio becomes a quartet. At school, Singh’s daughter is learning about history, society and culture but at home she must learn to challenge and interrogate these stories. As Singh and her daughter discuss subjects as wide-ranging and interconnected as race, the legacies of colonialism, queer family-making, extractive capitalism, mass consumption and climate catastrophe, their conversations reveal how our survival depends on breaking with the stories we’ve been told, and beginning to imagine new ones.

The Break – katherena vermette The Break – katherena vermette

I’m not sure how I feel about this story to be honest. I liked the suspenseful moments and I wanted to know how this will end because I was interested in seeing if the “villain “ will be caught and how much this family has to go through before that. Also to see if Karen will decide to trust her husband and stay with him. So when it all begins to feel too much, Karen knows just what she needs - to get away for a little while. Nothing big. Just a short break. If numbers are able to provide any sort of comfort, numbers like four, seven, 28 certainly do for me. It's both a cultural and a personal comfort. It's based on teachings I've received, and those teachings provide me with great comfort. In the overwhelmingness of writing a novel, these numbers were a useful kind of goal. It kind of made the big scary novel more manageable." The author also shows the effects upon the women and their children of the effects of the denigration and abuse from the wider culture. Despite the horror of the assault, and the uncomfortable matters discussed, the book helped me gain a better understanding of the discrimination First Nations people face, and the generational trauma that appears impossible to escape.There is a strong tone of colonialisation that needs to be spoken about, it destroys communities and then shames them for it, much like the community (in this case the generational matriarchs) in this book.