Emily is only 13-years old. She has a crush on a boy and attends a party he invited her to, but she also doesn’t realize a. what kind of party this is; and b. the boy has a girlfriend… a very jealous girlfriend with a violent streak. Emily ends up in the hospital after a very severe attack, and is surrounded by her extended family as she heals and as the police try to figure out what happened.

This was very good. It’s a very difficult topic, but I liked the writing and thought it was well done. There were a LOT of characters. The first five or six paragraphs were all from different points of view and initially didn’t appear connected. Of course, they were and it was explained, but it was still hard to keep everyone straight and how they were related (many literally) to each other. ( )

This novel wastes no time before jumping into its dark, gritty subject matter. Right away the reader is transported to a snowy night in Winnipeg, where a young mother witnesses a group of people attacking someone in this ominous field of hydro towers beside her house. Stella stares at the victim left outside but is too panicked to help aside from calling the police. The seasoned, white police officer think its just another drunken fight between Indigenous people, but Tommy, a young MĂ©tis officer, is desperate to get to the bottom of what happened that night.

The victim turns out to be a thirteen year-old girl named Emily, who unknowingly goes to a gang party to talk to a boy she likes, but ends up in the hospital from injuries following her sexual assault. Most of the novel is about her family coming together in this time of crisis and how these multiple generations of women work together in order to find recovery. This family is very much so a matriarchy, as men are noticeably absent from the family (it seems they either take off to go live a more outdoorsy life up North or leave for other women). The one man who has stuck around, Emily’s stepfather Pete, is viewed with great suspicion by some family members as potentially being the perpetrator of the violence. While this is a story about female empowerment and the strength of female relationships, it is also noteworthy that the gang of attackers turn out to be a pack of teenage girls . Vermette portrays that female relationships can be just as destructive as they are strengthening.

There are many dense layers of family dynamics at play here, especially when Stella (an estranged niece of the family) comes to realize that it was her own niece that she saw getting attacked. Vermette uses alternating narrative points of view between chapters to explore the many perspectives of the people involved. This technique works well in order to provide backstories and context to give us a rich understanding of the family. My main gripe is that there were possibly too many perspectives involved. Sometimes Vermette failed to provide each narrator with their own distinct style of voice, and so some characters (Lou, Paul, Stella, Cheryl) tended to blur together for me. I also didn’t appreciate the use of Rain (Stella’s dead mother) as a narrator at the start of each section. We have heard from way too women in this family already— we don’t need the dead lady chiming in too! The voices that were more distinct were my favourite ones, like Tommy the police officer who is still coming to terms with his Métis identity while working with racist coworkers in a racist city, or Phoenix, an extremely troubled girl. She is the most complex character here, and Vermette humanizes (without excusing) Phoenix’s violent behaviour when she reveals Phoenix’s difficult upbringing.

I reread [book:Birdie|23590716] at the same time as reading this because the novels share a lot of themes. Both are about overcoming trauma through empowering female relationships, family, and a return to traditional ways of Indigenous healing. Personally, I preferred Birdie because of its energy and creative writing style, but I can see why readers who prefer more linear narratives and family dramas might be more drawn to The Break. While I didn’t find Vermette’s prose to be very remarkable, her style is certainly highly readable and she kept me turning pages quickly. She does a great job of bringing Winnipeg to life (in all its glory)— the ceaseless winter, the bad parts of town, the gangs and bored teens, and the racial tension all feel very alive in this novel. I’m excited this is a Canada Reads pick and while I had a few issues this is definitely one hell of a debut! ( )

An ok read for me but sadly not one for my favourites list

The Break is a barren field on an isolated strip of land outside the home of Stella a young Métis mother. One evening Stella looks out of her window and spots someone in trouble on the Break ― she calls the police to alert them to a possible crime.

The story is told in series of shifting narratives, people who are connected both directly and indirectly with the victim, the police, family all tell their own stories leading up to that fateful night and this is where my difficulty began with the book. I found it very difficult to keep track of all the characters and just when I thought I was getting to know a character the narrative would shift and I would have to try and connect again. I also found the pace slow and tedious in places a lot of detail and yet little action. The writing was good but I seemed to loose interest in the story and ended up just being an ok read for me.

I read this as part of a group read and look forward to doing this soon again as its a great way to read a book and although I didn't love this one I am looking forward to more of Traveling Sisters Group reads. ( )

Set in Winnepeg’s North End neighborhood punctuated by a swath of land with hydroelectric towers that becomes the scene of a horrific crime and a symbolic artifact of the characters’ fractured lives, this debut novel for Métis poet Katherena Vermette follows the lives of a family whose members live with the consequences of their proximity to the violent gangs that roam their streets and prey on people, including thirteen-year-old Emily, who is viciously attacked. The community itself is largely indigenous, with many half-breeds, including one of the policemen investigating Emily’s attack. Racial bigotry forms the backdrop to the story. Flora, known as Kookom to her grandchildren (apparently it is the Cree word for grandmother), is the head of this four-generation family at the center of the novel.. Her daughter Cheryl is a functional alcoholic and her other daughter, Rain, was murdered when her daughter, Stella, was a child, such that Stella was raised by Kooko. Cheryl has two daughters, Louisa (Lou) and Paulina (Paul) who have children of their own. Emily is Paulina’s daughter. Men are not portrayed very kindly in this story; most of them abandon their responsibilities, and the women realize that they often get involved with unsuitable men. The story is told from the varied perspectives of the characters, who each bring pieces of the full story to the family’s complex history. Haunting. ( )

If there's one book that should have won CBC Canada Reads, this is it. ( )