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The Broken Book

The Broken Book

Author(s): Fiona Farrell

Location(s): Christchurch, Napier

Genre(s): Autobiography/Memoirs, Travelogue

Era(s): 2010/2011

Location

Content

Fiona Farrell’s meandering travel book shows how an earthquake can change everything in a flash: the book you were writing, the house you were living in, the thoughts that preoccupied you. The Broken Book consists of four essays about life and walking, bookended by a preamble and an afterword, and interrupted by 21 poems about the Christchurch earthquakes and their aftermath. The poems jolt into the essays like aftershocks, like cracks in the text; they make you pause and reconsider. The Broken Book is funny, timely, deeply personal but never self-indulgent – it shows Fiona’s talents as a writer and warmth as a human being.

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Book Reviews

Lead Review

It is a very difficult book to classify. It is a very personal experience of what an earthquake means to the people caught in the middle.

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