Book Review: All The Broken Pieces by Ann E. Burg

It was just sitting there on the table. In the hall in that undefined place sort of between the checkout area and the children’s section of the library. The tattered baseball that dominated the cover of this small book caught my eye. I picked it up. The other book on the table was a children’s picture book. It crossed my mind that I had seen children’s books on this table before. This didn’t seem like that. I looked at the cover more closely. The subtitle claimed it was a novel in verse. I opened the cover and read the first page.

My name is Matt Pin
and her name, I remember,
is Phang My
His name
I will never say,
though forever I carry his blood…

This is no children’s book. I may have read the note inside the dustcover before deciding to check out the book, but having just finished it, I already don’t remember. I was simply compelled to take it home, and I did. I haven’t put it down since and upon finishing it and now I am compelled to write.

Ann E. Burg‘s first novel has been published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic which leads me to believe that despite my opinion to the contrary, this is indeed meant to be a children’s book. As best as I can determine, it falls into the category of young adult. While I can imagine a sixteen year old reading this book, I cannot imagine them truly appreciating its beauty. Maybe I don’t give kids enough credit.

The story is of Matt Pin, a Vietnamese teenager, living in America in the care of his adoptive parents in the late 1970s. It is also a story of baseball, music, war, and love. The verse is both a clever device and the tool that makes the book work so well. There is not a single funny moment in this book. It is nothing but serious. Nonetheless, it drips with authority and sincerity. There are moments when this book is almost perfect in its understanding.

Our main character, Matt, can never escape the ravaged land he was torn from as a child. He cannot forget what he left behind and cannot see the world that is his life without the filter of his past. We are all that way aren’t we?

Matt’s adoptive little brother is swinging at the playground:

His small fists
squeeze the chain.
His perfect toes
dangle
inside
bright red sneakers.

…we write essays
on freedom.
I write,
Freedom is the color
of bright red sneakers.

What is this?
my teacher asks.
Does this make sense?

Yes it does. As does so much of the rest of this compelling read. Ms. Burg’s insights reach beyond the mind of this teen aged boy however. We’ve got Matt’s piano teacher, Jeff, a Vietnam medic who tells his support group about Matt,

He’s got a mother who
entrusted him to us
even though his father,
an American soldier,
ran out on her.

She gave her child to a bunch
of American soldiers…

…so we must have done
something good.

Then there’s Matt and the music. Working his way through those very first piano lessons with Jeff, Matt finds shelter and introspection in the music. Don’t we all?

“Music is not like words.”

“Right now I need music.”

“I only stumble
sometimes on the
way back down
when I get close
to Middle C.”

And there is Jeff’s well worn advice, “You have to play the silence too.” There is also the wonderful symmetry that Ms. Burg weaves between a Bee Gees classic and Matt’s two mothers and two brothers – the pair here and the pair left behind in Vietnam. Yes, the book has its share of devices, but they work so well it still satisfies.

Finally there is the love. Despite harrowing descriptions of maimed children and painful images of mangled memories, this book is about love. What it means to give out of love. What it means to take for love. What it means to forgive through love.

After all, there is a quiet happy ending. Maybe that’s why they keep this book in the children’s section. As adults we tend to let go of happy endings. We tend to stop believing. As a nervous Matt once speculates,

Maybe love is like that.
Maybe the wind shifts
and love just tiptoes away?

Ms. Burg ultimately suggests it need not be that way, but we cannot be afraid to be a child again if we want to know how to keep love in the game.