What: The Bowl Is Already Broken is mostly set in the fictional Museum of Asian Art in Washington, D.C., and it mostly centers on Promise Whittaker, the museum's acting director. The meaning of the title is twofold: First, it's taken from a proverb about the meaninglessness of possessions. Second, it's how the novel opens. One of the curators has just dropped an irreplaceable porcelain bowl, once owned by Thomas Jefferson, down the museum's grand staircase. Another curator is embezzling funds, the previous director is on an archaeological dig in the Taklamakan Desert, and the museum is under constant threat of closure. It all makes for a thoroughly satisfying story.
Comparable to: Zuravleff's style is similar to that of Mark Haddon, but Promise Whittaker reminds me of Antonia (Tony) Fremont from Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride.
Representative quote: "Really, he did not seem suited for retirement, for he was always waking up thinking himself dead."
You might not like it if: Some people don't want to know what happens in the kitchen of a restaurant, others don't want to know what happens backstage at a theater, and you don't want to know what happens behind the scenes at a museum.
How to get it: Probably at your library, maybe at your bookstore --- just remember you'll have to go all the way to the end of the "Z"s.
Connection to previous Wreckage: I compared the writing style to that of Mark Haddon. Haddon's A Spot of Bother was Rec. #27.
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