Powerful family saga
Katherena Vermette’s debut novel promotes itself as a “powerful family saga” that examines female fear of male power and violence along with looking at the love and empathy shared by all women. I’d say it hits two of those three points.
Vermette tells the story of a young mother who looks out across a snowy wasteland — the Break — on a brutally cold winter’s night and witnesses a horrifying crime. The story is told in the voices of those affected: the victim, the perpetrator, the witness and their families, touching on their relationships and histories.
In the convoluted links between characters, I found myself getting lost and having to flick back to find out if, “hang on, isn’t that the person who…?” especially as the novel wound down towards the denouement and the reveal of the perpetrator of the crime. But the strands mostly pull free and crystallise into the bloodlines that bind, as well as separate, the predominantly female cast of The Break.
Here is the powerful family saga, centred by a gentle and elderly matriarch and here is the love and empathy between sisters, mothers, daughters and aunts. Vermette deftly shows how the strength of women is the heart as well as the backbone of an entire community as they support each other after the events on that wintry night.
THE BREAK
by Katherena Vermette (Allen & Unwin, $33) Reviewed by Helen Van Berkel
But the fear of male power and violence is not a central theme. The crime that is central to the story is certainly violent and involves power and dominance. A thread of violence does weave through the story but it fairly quickly unravels into violence of a different kind.
That’s not to say the book is in any way lacking: what Vermette also shines a light on is a community in crisis. There is an unmistakable echo of Once Were Warriors here that adds extra depth and draws parallels, with indigenous peoples cut off first by colonialism then by arrogance and ignorance the world over.
The Break is an apt name for a novel that explores the gaps between between the past and the present.
It’s an astonishing debut, delivered in writing that is assured, strong, nuanced and rich in its storytelling and insight.