Broken (Paperback)

A woman wakes up in the middle of the night. A strange man is in her bedroom. She lies there in silence, paralyzed with fear. The woman is an author and the man one of her characters, one in a long line that waits in her driveway for the time when she'll tell their stories. He is so desperate that he has resorted to breaking into her house and demanding that she begin. He, the author decides, is named Alvar Eide, forty-two years old, single, works in a gallery. He lives a quiet, orderly life and likes it that way--no demands, no unpleasantness. Until the icy winter morning when a young drug addict, skinny and fragile, walks into the gallery. Alvar gives her a cup of coffee to warm her up. And then one day she appears on his doorstep. <em>Broken</em> is an unconventional, subtle, and disturbing mystery from a master of the form.

Publishers Weekly,In an odd departure from her Inspector Sejer series, Norwegian crime novelist Fossum (The Water's Edge) tells the story of a writer confronted by a character of her own creation. As the nameless female narrator explains, the characters for her future novels line up in her driveway in roughly the order she'll write their tales. One night, a man she names Alvar Eide-currently second in line-cuts to the front and demands his story be told. Fossum alternates between Eide's sedate life near Drammen, where he works in an art gallery, and his discussions with his "creator" about how certain events should play out. The first hint of tension appears in the form of an enigmatic 18-year-old girl, who comes into the gallery one winter afternoon and strikes up a conversation with Eide. Despite an intriguing concept, Fossum never fully sheds the artificiality of a writer writing about a writer writing. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Book format	Paperback
Fiction/nonfiction	Fiction
Publication date	August, 2011
Pages	272
Subgenre	Fiction
Edition	1
Publisher	HarperCollins
Original languages	English
Translator	Charlotte Barslund
Language	English
Assembled product dimensions (l x w x h)	8.00 x 5.31 x 0.66 Inches
Assembled product weight	0.54 lbs, 8.64 oz
Bisac subject heading	Fiction