A readable, enjoyable, complex and well-plotted story, exploring a number of different moral questions and conflicts, celebrity culture and the values of the media. ( )

A pretty fair family saga version of a commentary on morals. Mr Meek marshalls a big cast of characters and winds together a couple of novel situations to illustrate moral dilemma. A father assasinated by Irish terrorists, a daughter and partner working in leading edge medical science. It all hums along but ends with a whimper rather than the expected bang. Having introduced a certifiably mad leading representative of evil Mr Meek allows him to just disappear in less than the proverbial puff of smoke. As happens all to frequently moral dilemmas are not resolved in a hard black and white way but descend into a mess of compromise, self justification and self doubt. Good - but with the end literally drifting away into the sand it won't make a decent film. ( )

Bec, Ritche and Alex. Complicated ( )

The Heart Broke In feels epic to me. As James Meek homes in on a handful of people around London, putting a magnifying glass on their lives and relationships, he touches on some huge themes: morality and ethics, loyalty and betrayal, forgiveness, immortality, religion, science, love, time, human connection. But instead of being tediously ponderous on these heavy subjects, Meek wraps this exploration into a compelling drama (celebrities! crazy tabloid website! affairs!) that had me turning the pages anxiously. I won’t deny that it's a slow burn at times, but it always feels as if something is coming to a head soon, so I happily put my trust in him and got enmeshed in the lives of the characters and their concerns, both big and small.

The title of the book is a reference to a funny story that one of the characters tells about a Russian scientist’s belief that organs in the body came into being as a result of parasites coming together and evolving and keeping the body going—except for one organ, the heart. According to the scientist, the heart broke in. The novel illustrates how our various characters—and their hearts—navigate through their lives and respond to life-changing events.

Though the novel is unfolds through multiple points of view, I didn’t find the shift between them to be distracting at all. Multiple POVs work best when the author gets you to care about whomever you’re supposed to be focused on in that current chapter, instead of wishing you could continue with the plot point from the last chapter—basically, every chapter has to be engaging; and I think Meek did that well here. The characters were so vivid, their plot lines believable (even at their most outrageous) and distinctive enough that the flow of the story was seamless.

I think The Heart Broke In is much more effective at trying to capture and get at the core of the big questions that we’re facing in the 21st century, than say, Jonathan Franzen's Freedom, a book that didn't live up to this ambition. There are so many layers to the story and its themes here that I didn’t even pick up on some in my first read until I went back through the book in search of my favorite passages. I’m sure if I reread the entire thing, I’d stumble upon even more significant points that I missed the previous time. And you can tell how rich the book is just by glancing at reviews everywhere—each one takes over half of the review to just summarize the plot points, and each review zooms in on a different theme.

There are two aspects that fall a bit short of my expectations though. Some of the characters seem rather one-dimensional or cartoonish to me; some could’ve been developed better. Even in the case of one of the main characters, Bec, I don't feel like I truly know her and can't really tell when and why she actually fell in love with Alex so deeply (deep enough to take such dramatic action near the end). But all of the characters service the themes well and propel the plot enough that I could forgive this.

However, I struggled with the last quarter of the book when it seems like the story veers off towards melodrama that felt jarring, namely Bec’s deception; the focus on Dougie and his spiral, Alex’s puzzling reaction upon hearing about the betrayal, etc.. That was a hard fall for me, because up until then, I had been ready to proclaim the book as one of the best and go into raptures declaring it as the “great 21st century novel.” I’ll have to reflect a bit more on my feelings to figure out whether my dislike of the last section was related to my disagreement with certain character choices (i.e. the problem is my own hang-up) even as they are appropriate for the story, or whether the story’s artificial-seeming turn really did a disservice to all that came before it (i.e. the book’s fault). I suspect the problem is me, and yet I find it difficult to discount that distaste and have it not affect my final opinion of the book. Hence the four stars, instead of the full five.

With that being said, a novel that resonated with me to the extent that I felt a bit betrayed by the ending, that I cared enough, probably did “it” right.

Oh, and I have to mention that the US book cover with the red blood cells is gorgeous; I prefer it to the more ho-hum UK edition.
( )

Ritchie is a former rock star turned TV star and his sister, Bec, is a Malaria researcher and the story intertwines, knots, unravels, weaves and spins around and through them. Ritchie has an affair with a 15 year old star of his X-Factor like TV show and will do anything to keep this fact from breaking up his family. Bec infects herself with a parasite in order to study the immunity to Malaria an obscure tribe has. Notionally they are opposite ends of the moral scale however Meek does muddy the waters considerably. Once Bec ends her engagement with a newspaper magnate, from a daily Mail like rag, she makes an enemy for herself and her brother. Further plot is provided by a backstory in which their father is executed by the IRA when they are young children, and how this affects both their lives, and through a number of friends and family who intersect with the main story. This is a story about love, betrayal, honour, faith versus reason, guilt, shame and sibling rivalry. Meek has a cast of mostly unlikable characters but still makes you care what happens to them which is a rare touch and although the denouement and coda are a little weak when compared to the meat of the text it was still a satisfying read. The science versus religion was a bit ham handed also with ultra-atheist versus fundamental Christian which made it a little dull, and felt a little stale and this aspect should have been far more interesting. For these reasons this is a 4 star read for me but one I’d unhesitatingly recommend.

Overall – A large book (550 pages) with large themes ( )