The Broken Mirror – BooksPlease

A fable for all ages about a mirror which reflects an alternative world

Unbound|November 2017|81 pages|Library book|4*

The Broken Mirror was first published in Italian in 2012. It is a collaboration between novelist Jonathan Coe and Chiara Coccorese, an Italian artist, and is described as ‘a political parable for children, a contemporary fairy tale for adults, and a fable for all ages.‘. It’s published by Unbound, a publishing house funded directly by readers

The hardback book is lovely to hold and the coloured illustrations are beautiful. It tells the story of Claire, a little girl of eight, who finds a fragment of a broken mirror in a rubbish dump behind her house. This is no ordinary mirror, as what she sees reflected in it is a beautiful world so unlike the real world around her. It’s a world full of colour, where her house is transformed into a castle, just like the sandcastle she had built at the beach on holiday – a fairy tale world, so much more exciting and magical than the real world. As Claire’s father remarks, Claire lives in a dream world.

By the time Claire reaches her teens she doesn’t look in the mirror as often. But she is dissatisfied with her life and, seeing her home town being spoilt by property developers and how badly immigrants are treated, she begins to look into it more and more, where she sees a better way of life. Then Claire meets other people who also have a fragment of broken mirror – she is not alone with her dreams of a better world.

It is well written and I enjoyed reading it. Coe shows a society in crisis and how it might be improved. It’s a simple story, simply told but presenting important issues, ending with the possibility of a better future.

These are just some of the books I’ve recently borrowed from the library:

Library bks April 2019

The Broken Mirror by Jonathan Coe, Illustrations by Chiara Coccorese. This little book looked a bit out of place on the adult fiction shelves so I picked it up and the blurb on the back cover made me even more curious – ‘a political parable for children, a contemporary fairy tale for adults, and a fable for all ages.’ It shouldn’t take me long to read – 81 pages, including the illustrations – so I hope to write more about it soon.
The Reason I Jump: One Boy’s Voice from the Silence of Autism by Naoki Higashida with an introduction by David Mitchell. Naoki was only thirteen when he wrote this book. I’m sure I’ve read about this book somewhere, but I can’t think where or in what context, but I think that was why this book caught my eye.
After the Party by Cressida Connolly, historical fiction as Phyllis looks back at her life during World War Two. This is a book several bloggers have written about and I thought I’d like to read it. It’s on this year’s shortlist for The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction along with A Long Way From Home by Peter Carey, The Western Wind by Samantha Harvey and Now We Shall Be Entirely Free by Andrew Miller. I’ve read the last two and enjoyed them both.
Faithful Place by Tana French. I couldn’t come away from the library without a crime fiction novel – this is the third book in the Dublin Murder Squad series. It’s a psychological mystery focusing on the police force set in present day Dublin.