How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?Visit Sarah Easter Collins's website.
As a title, Things Don’t Break On Their Own implies the involvement of outside forces: things can break, and more significantly, so can people, but none of that happens by itself, and this is certainly a true reflection of the nature of the story. A reader will discover two distinct families in Things Don’t Break On Their Own. Laika and Willa’s family is all about appearances, to the point that they are obsessed with not having any of their cracks showing, whereas in Robyn’s family, everything can always be fixed, mended, saved for later and made better. They are loud, messy and their cracks are visible and worn with love.
When a bowl breaks at Robyn’s house, her father shows the two girls how they can use the Japanese art of Kintsugi to mend it. I love the idea behind Kintsugi, that something can be made more beautiful by the very act of mending it. Robyn comes from a family where things break all the time, but vitally things – and people – are treasured. So healing is a big theme of the novel, and...[read on]
The Page 69 Test: Things Don't Break on Their Own.
Q&A with Sarah Easter Collins.
--Marshal Zeringue
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