Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Broken Glass Park: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Broken Glass Park: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Broken Glass Park: A Novel
    Ebook249 pages4 hours

    Broken Glass Park: A Novel

    By Alina Bronsky

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Russian-born Alina Bronksy has been the subject of constant praise and debate since her debut novel, Broken Glass Park, was published in Germany in 2008. She has been hailed as a literary prodigy and her novel as "an explosive debut" (Emma Magazine). Now, Broken Glass Park makes it's first appearance in English in Tim Mohr's masterful translation. 

    The heroine of this throughly contemporary novel is Sascha Naimann. Sascha was born in Moscow, but now lives in Berlin with her two younger siblings and, until recently, her mother. She is precocious, independent, street-wise, and, since her stepfather murdered her mother several months ago, an orphan. Unlike most of her companions, she doesn't dream of escaping from the tough housing project where they live. Sascha's dreams are different: she longs to write a novel about her beautiful but naïve mother and she wants to end the life of Vadim, the man who brutally murdered her.

    Sascha's story, as touching as any in recent literature, is that of a young woman consumed by two competing impulses, one celebrative and redemptive, the other murderous. In a voice that is candid and self-confident, at times childlike and at others all too mature, Sascha relates the struggle between those forces that can destroy us, and those that lead us out of sorrow and pain back to life.

    Germany's Freundin Magazine called Broken Glass Park "a gripping portrayal of life on the margins of society." But Sascha's story does not remain on the margins; it goes straight to the heart of what it means to be young, alive, and conscious in these first decades of the new century.

    A finalist for the prestigious Ingeborg Bachmann Prize
    Now an award-winning motion picture with planned US release in 2015.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherEuropa Editions
    Release dateMar 30, 2010
    ISBN9781609459703
    Unavailable
    Broken Glass Park: A Novel
    Author

    Alina Bronsky

    Alina Bronksy is the author of Broken Glass Park (Europa, 2010); The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine (Europa, 2011), named a Best Book of 2011 by The Wall Street Journal, The Huffington Post, and Publishers Weekly; Just Call Me Superhero (Europa, 2014), Baba Dunja’s Last Love (Europa, 2016), and My Grandmother’s Braid (Europa, 2021). Born in Yekaterinburg, an industrial town at the foot of the Ural Mountains in central Russia, Bronsky now lives in Berlin.

    Read more from Alina Bronsky

    Related to Broken Glass Park

    Related ebooks

    General Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Art of Fiction No. 251

      Mar 15, 2022

      The Art of Fiction No. 251
      20 min read

    • Article

      The Posting

      Jun 27, 2023

      The Posting
      35 min read

    • Article

      The Portrait

      Mar 1, 2018

      I WAS BORN almost completely deaf, and by the time I was seven I had already become a prisoner to my education. In the morning, I had speech therapy and tutoring with Mr. Bishop. We sat at my family’s long dining-room table, which was always covered

      9 min read

    • Article

      Yellow Summer Rain

      May 19, 2022

      Yellow Summer Rain
      23 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Nov 1, 2020

      We went to visit our brother.They had a special, blue roomfor the purpose of waiting.A counselor came over andcalled my sweater “too provocative.”Nora started laughingand then I started laughingand then our brother came outand told us about the squir

      4 min read

    • Article

      Motherhood Makes You Obscene

      Oct 1, 2019

      Motherhood Makes You Obscene
      10 min read

    • Article

      How Postcards From My Mother Helped Me Survive Childhood

      Mar 3, 2017

      For years, my mother wrote to me every day. I’d been sent away to boarding school and for the first weeks was forbidden to call home­. I was eleven. This was just before mobile phones came beeping and clicking into the lives of everyday people. I di

      4 min read

    • Article

      Ghost Girl, Banana

      Aug 21, 2023

      By the time I was 25, there were only two things I remembered about Mumma. The first was that she smelled of watermelons, the second was that we were happy. We’d taken our father’s name of course, but a name is only half a story. The other half exist

      6 min read

    • Article

      I Never Called Her Momma

      Sep 13, 2023

      I Never Called Her Momma
      39 min read

    • Article

      A Puzzle Of Nostalgia

      Aug 26, 2022

      A Puzzle Of Nostalgia
      5 min read

    • Article

      What’s In A Name?

      Dec 22, 2021

      What’s In A Name?
      9 min read

    • Article

      Hauntings

      Jul 5, 2023

      Hauntings
      11 min read

    • Article

      Caught Out

      Oct 2, 2022

      Caught Out
      9 min read

    • Article

      Bad-Time Dimitri

      Feb 3, 2022

      Bad-Time Dimitri
      16 min read

    • Article

      Books Only a Mother Could Love

      May 10, 2019

      Books Only a Mother Could Love
      5 min read

    • Article

      Six Sonnets

      Jan 1, 2021

      Goldenrod, I could say, you know, everybody wants somethingfrom me, but, well, everybody wants something and nobody wantsnothing from me, goldenrod, towhead, beast. Goldenrod, you packthe meadows like gold-plated sardines. I have heart palpitationsbu

      3 min read

    • Article

      Losing My Grandma and Finding the Words for It in ‘The Sandbox’

      Jun 7, 2018

      I have a deep bond with the literature that was recommended to me by the man I used to love. Some of the books he passed along I rejected out of hand—books such as Never Let Me Go and The Cement Garden and Child of God. Knee-jerk reactions to literat

      6 min read

    • Article

      Dolly’s Star Turn

      Jul 12, 2023

      Dolly’s Star Turn
      7 min read

    Reviews for Broken Glass Park

    3.5/5

    84 ratings13 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      This atmospheric and, yes, surreal, novel takes place in a community of Russian immigrants in Germany. They cluster together in what sounds like a "project" or ghetto in the city. Sascha is seventeen, and the head of her family, although she and her brother and sister do have a housekeeper who is supposed to be in charge. Sascha's mother and her boyfriend were murdered two years ago by Sascha's step-father, and her goal in life is to kill him. Much of her energy is consumed by thinking of ways to murder Vadim. She has plenty of time to plan because God only knows how long he will be in prison. Sascha also worries about her younger brother who saw and was traumatized by the murders. Marie seems incapable of learning German, so most of the responsibility for caring for the little ones falls to Sascha.Then through a fluke, she meets Volker, a professional man, and his son Felix, and her life changes.
    • 4/5
      I was so swept up in this book, I forgot to take notes for my review! I'm shocked that we're not hearing more about this book.Broken Glass Park is a story told from the point of view of seventeen year old Sascha Naimann. Sascha, the main character, may only be seventeen, but she is gritty, feisty and angry enough to make the reader question whether or not we should root for her. She is described in the book as "prickly" and "defensive" but we catch glimpses of her softness, especially towards her two younger siblings, that make us fall in love with her. Sascha struggles between her age and her maturity, as she was thrust into adulthood way before the murder of her mother. I couldn't help but sympathize for her situation - she watched her mother be gunned down by her stepfather, Vadim, who was nothing but awful to all three of the children - but at the same time she takes risks and is at times utterly cruel to the rest of the world. Maybe she feels she has the right, since the world has been nothing but cruel to her.I have to share the first few lines with you:"Sometimes I think I'm the only one in our neighborhood with any worthwhile dreams. I have two, and there's no reason to be ashamed of either one. I want to kill Vadim. And I want to write a book about my mother. I already have a title: The Story of an Idiotic Readheaded Woman Who Would Still Be Alive If Only She Had Listened To Her Smart Oldest Daughter."Broken Glass Park is an amazing debut novel unlike anything I had ever read before. This is one of those books that I never would have discovered if I didn't have Alison's Book Marks. Many thanks to Regal Literary for bringing Alina Bronsky into my world! Powerful writing, compelling characters, and a storyline that kept the pages turning. What more could a reader ask for?
    • 3/5
      Sascha Naimann is not like the rest of the people who live in her broken down apartment building in Berlin. They don't have dreams, or if they do, their dreams are stupid and shallow. Sascha, however, has two dreams, two important goals in life. One is to write a book about her mother, the other is to kill the man who murdered her mother. Broken Glass Park is Sascha's story. It's obvious right from the start that Sascha is a different sort of narrator. She's not soft or sympathetic. Despite the bad hand life seems to have dealt her, Sascha isn't looking for pity. She's prickly at best and, at worst, downright cruel to the people who have the misfortune of stumbling into her path. Yet, she is intelligent. She is her half-brother and sister's fierce protector and a determined force in seeing that they are educated and brought up properly. She loves her mother as much as she hated her mother for her weakness and foolishness. She claims to loathe men, yet can't stop herself from wanting to be desired by them. Sascha is a study in contradictions and a narrator that is hard to understand and even harder to love.Told from Sascha's first person point of view, Broken Glass Park is brutal. Bronsky doesn't shy away from uncomfortable subjects. She gives us glimpses of a certain sensitivity and nobility in Sascha, but never long enough for us to forget the narrator's angry, cruel streak. Just as Sascha doesn't let anyone in her life get too near, we, the readers, aren't allowed to get too near either, just stand to the side reading as Sascha battles her way through the remainder of her deeply troubled youth.Broken Glass Park is a story that is undeniably well-told. Sascha's character, whether you like her or not, is vividly created in Bronsky's spare, straight-forward prose nicely translated from German by Tim Mohr. All her contradictions and her confusion are laid bare for us and despite being unable to love her, as a reader, you can't help but hope for a redemptive end to Sascha's story. Unfortunately, however, I didn't love the book. While I read the whole thing and found the narrator's voice unique and at times captivating, I felt as if I were never fully engrossed in the story. The rough nature of the story and the narrator's prickly, cruel, self-destructive personality were often off-putting which kept me from being entirely taken in by it. More than once I found myself frustrated and perplexed by Sascha's actions, which inasmuch as it may be indicative of a strong well-written character, didn't make Broken Glass Park a particularly rewarding reading experience for me. It was real, and it was gritty, perhaps, a bit too gritty and real for my tastes.
    • 3/5
      This is Bronsky's first novel, and it shows. It opens wonderfully: "Sometimes I think I'm the only one in our neighborhood with any worthwhile dreams. I have two, and there's no reason to be ashamed of either one. I want to kill Vadim. And I want to write a book about my mother. I already have a title: The Story of an Idiotic Redheaded Woman Who Would Still Be Alive If Only She Had Listened To Her Smart Older Daughter."Bronsky created a wonderful narrative voice for Sacha, the "smart older daughter." When the novel opens, Sacha's mother has been murdered by her stepfather, and Sacha, with her two younger siblings, living in an impoverished immigrant area of Berlin, must cope as she deals with her anger and her grief. Unfortunately, the book just doesn't seem to hold together. It wandered a lot, as if Bronsky wasn't quite sure where she wanted to take Sacha, and included Sacha having a fairly creepy relationship with a middle-aged journalist. Despite some good parts, this was basically an unsatisfactory read.2 1/2 generous stars
    • 4/5
      Set in Germany the book is about a 17 year old Russian immigrant, an intelligent gutsy girl overwhelmed by anger. It is well written and the character believable. At various points it seems that the plot could get sentimental, soppy, and unbelievable. It never succumbs to that but rather allows the complexity of human needs and desires to drive the plot. I thought it a very good book
    • 4/5
      I have to admit Broken Glass Park was not an easy read. It was gritty, raw and real. There were moments when I just had to set the book aside and go do something else ~ why? Sascha is the storyteller and the one I wanted to just take in my arms and rock her like a little baby although she was a 17 year old girl. She had been left to deal with the aftermath of her mother's murder by her step-father in front of her younger brother and sister and herself in an apartment very similar to what she compared to Eminem's 8 mile trailer.what i liked ~ * Sascha's voice - she was a REAL teenager; what I remember being like when I was a teenager * the quotes! I love quotes anyways and Sascha had some that blew me away with her wisdom! * The realism. Rarely do I read a book about child abuse or spousal abuse that is written with honesty, grit, and blunt reality like this one. As I've said before, I worked for 15 years with child abuse victims, reading all kinds of books about the subject, and this is one I will recommend.what i did not like ~ * i'm not sure if it was a translation problem or if this was just how the book was but there's transition issues; sometimes i was not sure who was speaking, who the new person in the picture was. For example she meets a college guy named Volker who has the same name as the newspaper editor who she sees as her savior. With the college Volker he just suddenly appears and I didn't know who he was. Perhaps it was to show how messed up Sascha was in her mental state at the moment but as a reader I had trouble catching up. * Some things were left hanging ~ will there be a sequel? will I find out what happened to everybody? both Volkers? Felix? Sascha? Ack! I want to know!I did look up this one drink that is mentioned in the book. Let me also say Alina Bronsky was born in Russia and grew up in Germany from the time she was 13 until she was an adult. Broken Glass Park was first published in Germany. With that said, there is a drink mentioned in the book that is forced down the college Volker's throat in a tough scene IN broken glass park. The drink is called "sailor's tea." I've included a bit below from what I found on a website that was not written in Russian or German! Everything I read warned strongly how this drink can KILL. Very scary! I knew those Russians had strong stomachs and the ability to drink anyone under the table but tea that kills?!? by the way, this tea is often mixed with VODKA! Geez can it get any stronger!?! Never drink the zavarka undiluted. It has a strong narcotic effect, causing intense heartbeat, hallucinations and restlessness. This effect has been widely used by captives in Russian prisons and forced labor camps, since tea has always been included into the rations of the prisoners. The name of tea-based narcotics in the Russian criminal slang is "chephyr". If you introduce Russian tea-drinking into some non-Russian company, don't forget to label the zavarka pot! Otherwise, ignorant people might drink its content, and die of a heart attack as a consequence. You, in turn, may face lawsuits or vendetta depending on the culture you live in. Since the outstanding Russian chemist, Dmitrij Ivanovich Mendeleyev (same guy who devised the periodic table of elements) invented and standardized the technology of 40% vol/vol vodka production, you have Absolut control over the alcohol content of your tea. If the ratio of vodka does not exceed one third, we speak of tea with vodka. If it is between one and two thirds, we speak of a sailor's tea. Beyond that, it is contaminated (or pure) vodka. But come on, hackers claim to be intellectuals, right? You will need your braincells in the future. Sailor's TeaI liked this book overall. I think it reflects how children and youth have to cope when there is not a support system around and their lives fall apart, literally. This book is definitely not for younger teens as it contains strong sexual content and physical violence. I WILL and DO recommend this book to my child abuse victims assistance workers and the older teenagers. I also recommend this book to anyone who wants to know what it's like to live in the Russian Ghetto of Germany. A truly powerful book.
    • 4/5
      I found this a very interesting book, in spite of not being able to really connect with the protagonist.I found Sacha fascinating, but I never quite felt I understood her, either intellectually or emotionally. It isn't that I found her unconvincing. I always believed she was acting in character. She was just... foreign to me. When I thought about it, I realized her life was so different than mine that I was having trouble bridging the gap.I was fascinated by the look at a culture inside a culture, a very poor Russian immigrant community in Germany. Sacha was a misfit because of her personality, and possibly would have been one wherever she was. She didn't fit into the wider community because she was part of the poor Russian tenements, but she has too many goals for her life to fit in with the discouraged teens in her area.She's taken on responsibility for her siblings, a responsibility that leads her to decide she much protect them from their father when he is finally released from jail.At the same time, she's feeling the need to escape her life, and makes the first steps towards doing this. Along the way, she discovers a whole different world than her own, takes some time to explore her sexuality, and after all this makes some decisions that didn't make sense to me.A very interesting read.
    • 5/5
      A stunning novel, everyone should read it. This is Alina Bronsky's first novel. Her second, The Hottest Dishes of Tartar Cuisine, is also excellent. They have a lot in common: gritty stories of Russian emigrees in Germany told by unforgettable narrators. But they also show the range of Bronsky's imagination and voice not least the fact that this one is narrated by a 17 year old girl and Tartar Cuisine was narrated by a grandmother.

      Broken Glass Park is a coming of age story with nothing whitewashed. Sascha lives in a Russian slum outside a German city. Her mother has just been murdered and she's left with her two half siblings and a relative who comes from Russia to take care of them. Sascha is brilliant, both cruel and kind, both strong and helpless. Following her mother's death she starts to spin further out of control. Has to be read.
    • 4/5
      Sascha Naimann is a street-smart orphan, left alone with her younger brother and sister when her stepfather shoots her mother. Sascha's main goal in life is to shoot her stepfather, Vadim, when he is released from prison. The children are now cared for by one of Vadim's cousins, though Sascha, at seventeen, clearly wields the power in the household. Sascha is one of the few in her predominantly-Russian housing complex who speaks German. Generally I enjoyed this book, though it could have used a stronger plot. Aside from killing Vadim, Sascha's life is scattered, as is the action. I felt like the plot was wavering. Bronsky's book does show the remarkably power that precocious teenage girls can wield over men, though I did find Sascha's relationship with the newspaper editor to be creepy, at best.
    • 4/5
      A gritty, contemporary coming-of-age story with themes of friendship, domestic violence, loss, retribution and restitution. 17-year-old Sascha, a Russian émigré to Germany, makes an interesting and unpredictable first-person narrator. She is street-smart, intimidating and fearless. She is also, at times, squeamish, vulnerable and naïve. Sometimes she acts mature beyond her years and other times is strangely childlike, veering off into unexpected moments of self destruction, promiscuity, mania and depression. Sascha’s narrative voice is fantastic. One of piercing honesty, imbued with both a gentle love (for her siblings) and a barely contained rage (against her mother’s murderer). I give Bronsky full marks for creating such a fascinating character in Sascha. The plot is where the story struggles. At times the plot is disjointed, meandering and off-pace. This works okay to depict an individual (Sascha) spinning out of control, but some events seem to have been included more for shock value than as events for logical plot development. That being said, Bronsky does pack a lot into this story. While I found Sascha’s relationship with the newspaper editor Volker and his son Felix to be rather unusual, I felt real compassion for the characters, including Sascha’s Russian aunt Maria, who struggles to adapt to life in Germany. Laced with wicked humour and smart dialogue, the end result is an uneven story that shines because of its compelling characters. For a debut novel, Bronsky provides a young, edgy, smart talking voice that is shouting to be heard. Definitely looking forward to reading more of Bronsky's books.
    • 5/5
      Wow! Quite a coming of age story, although BROKEN GLASS PARK's heroine, Sascha, at seventeen has already been through some very serious and traumatic stuff, so she's pretty much already "come of age," and now she's just fighting for her own survival and that of her two younger half-siblings. The story is set in a housing project on the edge of Frankfurt (yeah, Germany - the novel is translated from German) filled mostly with poor Russian emigrants. Sascha, an all-A student, has become fluent in German, as well as English and French, is determined to that "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps," and is doing pretty well, despite numerous obstacles. Her "guardian" is a near-illiterate distant cousin of her stepfather, who is now in prison - for killing her mother. And no, I'm not really giving anything away here. Like I said, there's a lot of very serious, messy, dysfunctional s**t going on here. But I think I'll stop here. BROKEN GLASS PARK was Russian-German Alina Bronsky's first book, and apparently created quite a sensation over in Germany when it was first published several years back, even winning some prizes. Imagine if Holden Caulfield were a girl, only much harder, tougher. Now transplant him to present day Germany and have Sam Peckinpah write his story. Very highly recommended.- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER
    • 4/5
      The only word that comes to mind when I think about Russian author Alina Bronsky is audacious. I’m not sure how old she is but this, her debut novel, is the second novel I’ve read (apparently, I’m reading her works in reverse order of publication) and she is definitely a risk-taker. Daring, bold, impudent, whatever adjective you choose to attach to her name, her writing provides for a remarkable look at the lives of Russian immigrants in modern-day Germany. And you can count on a unique and inimitable voice. In Broken Glass Park, that voice belongs to seventeen year old Sachsa Naimann and the book’s first paragraph provides an introduction to this brash teenage girl:”Sometimes I think I’m the only one in our neighborhood with any worthwhile dreams. I have two, and there’s no reason to be ashamed of either one. I want to kill Vadim. And I want to write a book about my mother. I already have a title: The Story of an Idiotic Redheaded Woman Who Would Still Be Alive If Only She Had Listened to Her Smart Oldest Daughter. Or maybe that’s more of a subtitle. But I have plenty of time to figure it out because I haven’t started writing yet.”So now you know what the book is about. Sachsa lives with her younger brother and sister in a Russian ghetto. They’ve all been left orphans by the murder of their mother and the incarceration of their father. And if she weren’t so darn smart, she’d realize that her dream should be to get out of that ghetto by marrying a rich man like her friend Angela does.But Sachsa keeps her eye on the prize and in the meantime, we learn what life is like for her, her siblings and their friends. And when she becomes infatuated with a handsome and caring older man, Sachsa’s life takes a dangerous and violent, turn.I can’t say enough about the language, which is startlingly vivid and stark.”The window shatters into a thousand glittering shards. For a fraction of a second they all hang in the air, a giant, weightless piece of art. Then they all plummet to the asphalt and break into even smaller pieces.” (Page 206)Nothing left to do now except wait impatiently for Alina Bronsky’s next effort. Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      Sascha is a vulnerable girl hiding behind a tough veneer. I couldn’t help but admire her candor and her unflinching fight to deal with a disturbing childhood filled with domestic violence and childhood abuse. The author told Sascha’s story without sentimentality but with a straightforwardness that was refreshing yet brutal in its honesty. The writing was sparse and lyrical. I couldn’t put it down.