Broken by Elizabeth Pulford

Broken by Elizabeth Pulford, illustrated by Angus Gomes

For fans of Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson comes Broken by Elizabeth Pulford and illustrated by Angus Gomes. The subject matter is not the same as Speak but the protagonists share a similar problem—keeping a terrible secret that is changing or has changed them into somebody else and feeling, literally, like they’ve lost their voice because of it.

When Broken begins, Zara, the protagonist, is in a coma. She and her brother Jem have suffered a terrible motorcycle accident and Jem is dead. But Zara doesn’t know that. She doesn’t know she’s in a coma. In fact, all she knows is that she has to find her brother. She has a terrible conviction that he’s lost and that the evil nemesis in Jem’s favorite comic book series is the one who has taken him. To find him, and to save herself, she uses the one thing she’s good at doing: drawing. Lost herself, deep inside her coma, she “draws” a cartoon with an evil nemesis hiding Jem from her, and she searches for Jem within the cartoon strip.

The narrative clips between shreds of conversation that Zara overhears as people enter her hospital room where she is in a coma and non-responsive to external stimuli; scenes from within the comic strip (for graphic novel fans!); and flashbacks to her past, which include a terrible kidnapping she endured when she was a young child. In the search to find her brother, Zara teeters between the possibility of losing herself altogether (quite literally dying) and being able to find herself, including the self she lost many years ago when she was kidnapped.

The novel exquisitely weaves together the present in which Zara is hospitalized and unconscious, the comic strip that Zara draws from deep within herself, and the past traumatic event that she suffered as a child. Pulford is a New Zealand author. I hope this book launches her reputation in the U.S. as a daring and innovative writer, deftly combining genres.