Broken People by Sam Lansky (2020)

Los Angeles, California

This is another tough one for me to review. This book, to me, basically boils down to: Would you rather hate a book all the way through but it has a decent ending (like Catch-22) or would you rather really enjoy the book the whole way through but be disappointed by the ending (like this book or When You Finish Saving the World)? My boyfriends response was: "The second one, because if I really hated a book I would stop reading it and not get to the end." The horror. Who can stop reading a book once they've started it??!!

I have to say, this book gets an A for creativity in my book. It's essentially a memoir. The story follows Sam, a 30-something writer living in Los Angeles. At a dinner party, he learns bout a shaman that has advertised that he can fix all your problems in a 3-day weekend. Sam and his friend ultimately decide to embark on this journey, and this sets him on a path to unravel his past.

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At first we just get tidbits of Sam's life - people he's met, boyfriends, how they met, how they broke up, etc. As we get further into the ceremony, the memories become clearer and deeper. And Sam, who seemed like a fairly normal depressed and anxious millennial, turned out to have some deep-seeded body dysmorphia, a self-destructive streak, and an apparent inability to communicate like an adult in a relationship.

If I could rate this book by parts, Before and During (except for the last parts of it when things get really trippy) would be 4 or 5 stars, but After would be just 1 or 2 stars. It was difficult to determine what was the figurative heavy, black ball that lived in his stomach. Was it his body dysmorphia? The fact that he thought he was a bad person? Was it his inability to allow things to be okay? I thought there would be more of a climax, some sort of event that would explain why he felt these ways. Instead, with the strange white-washed, faux-spirituality that Californians are so good at, the Spirt Mother, simply opened the closed box in his stomach which represented his negative thoughts. Then - poof - when Sam recovers he's into yoga and crystals, and he's happy and cured! Bummer. This book had such an interesting structure, and Sam made some really poignant self-reflections that I wish were the actual remedies.

I still have to commend this book for it's structure and creativity. It just didn't fully deliver.

Review by the Numbers

Overall: 3/5

Plot: 3/5

Writing: 4/5

Character Development: 3.5/5

Message: 2/5

Challenges Satisfied: California (Reading My Way Around the World Challenge)

Book about LGBTQIA+ Experiences (Diversity Challenge)

Book published in the 2020s (Decades Challenge)

Contemporary (Genres Challenge)