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Reviewed by:
  • Split
  • Deborah Stevenson
Avasthi, Swati. Split. Knopf, 2010 [240p]. Library ed. ISBN 978-0-375-96340-7 $19.99 Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-375-86340-0 $16.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-0-375-89526-5 $16.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 8-12

It's been years since Jace has last seen his older brother, Christian, but it's to Christian's apartment that Jace flees after he finally fights back against his savagely abusive father. Christian, trying to make a life apart from his dysfunctional family and struggling with med school, isn't thrilled, but he lets Jace stay. As Jace tries to find some kind of equilibrium, he's besieged by guilt about leaving behind his mother, who's promised to come and join her sons soon, and about, as the book eventually reveals, his own assault on his beloved girlfriend; meanwhile, he and Christian negotiate a brotherly relationship complicated with anger, shame, and grief. Taut, uneasy, and perceptive, this is a compelling and complex portrait of a kid's painful separation from a toxic upbringing. Avasthi resists the temptation to restrict narrator Jace to nobility and guilt—in fact, he's clearly his father's son in many ways, arrogant and entitled and self-involved, and drawn to power games in his relationships—yet he's also sympathetic in his willingness to fight back against his legacy. The ricocheting trajectories of anger, blame, and guilt are well mapped (Jace is angry, for instance, that Christian left him behind, and he's opted to take the blame for his failure to protect his mother rather than being angry with her for [End Page 323] her failure to protect him) and the shifting roles in the family (after Christian left, Jace moved from being his father's favorite to his mother's defender) are perceptively identified. There are some tough truths here—the boys' mother may never leave, no matter what they do, and they're always going to be affected, in their own ways, by their experience—but they're empathetically conveyed, and readers will appreciate the book's strength and honesty as much as its understanding.

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