Broken Glass Park

I just finished Broken Glass Park, by Alina Bronsky. This book is in limited supply as it is from Europe, so it might be hard to find in US bookstores. I actually found it at an offbeat bookstore in Georgetown, Bridge Street Books. It's an amazing bookstore with really interesting beatnik and hippie books that you won't find anywhere else. I think you all should check it out! And feel free to borrow the book from me girls. It's a great read. Okay, now about the book. Here is my review:

Broken Glass Park deals with a teenage girl, Sascha, whose main goals in life are to write a book about her deceased mother and to kill her stepfather, the man who murdered her mother. Grand goals, eh. As we follow Sascha, these two goals are prevalent behind most if not all of her motives throughout the book. The book, moreover, hits on a lot of issues from immigration and cultural differences to sex and age discrepancy and the moral dilemma that goes along with it to drugs, rape, depression, and the trials and tribulations of that we experience in youth.

Sascha is a Russian immigrant who moved to Germany with her family and now lives in a Russian ghetto outside Berlin. She faces a lot of discrimination throughout the book for her status as an immigrant, she even encounters a boy who has surprisingly neo-nazi ideas towards her kind. As for her love-life, Sascha's romance with newspaper editor, Volker, is borderline creepy. He could be her father in terms of age. It even hints that Volker has a tendency to go after younger girls, including one of his interns earlier on in the book, which gives him a child molester vibe. Yet, you sympathize with him due to his nice nature towards her and his overwhelming concern for her well being. It just goes to show that life is not as black and white as we would like it to be and that people, in general, are very gray in character. You want to like Volker based on his generosity towards Sascha, but you can't help but find his generosity a tad bit suspicious in nature.

The book has a lot more components that I could dive into, but I don't want to give away too much. Let's just say that I read it in two days. I couldn't put it down. It's an easy read, very smooth writing so it shouldn't take long to breeze through. I recommend it to all of you!! The main character's life is really f*ed up, which makes it all the more interesting.