Reviewed by B. Lynn Goodwin
Posted on: August 19, 2025
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How independent are you? What might change that? For Marianne, the protagonist in Ellen Barker’s The Breaks, a move to a non-corporate job, followed by a broken arm on a first date, make it challenging to live alone.
Her opinionated septuagenarian is often a busybody, intruding on her peace and simultaneously helping with her dog. Her neighbor across the back fence has a whole different agenda and asks for help boldly, but she also gives assistance freely. Marianne’s feistiness and independence are reshaped but do not disappear as she’s first dragged into helping others and then develops far more commitment to the needs of others than she had while employed in the corporate world.
After losing a home in California, Marianne returns to her old East of Troost home in Kansas City. The neighborhood changed because of white flight and became mostly black. (True story.) Barker introduces her characters by what they say and do, and color seems coincidental to both the author and the narrator.
Marianne is barely settled when she runs into a new neighbor, Sister Collette, who lives in the house behind hers. Sister Collette asks for a favor: Can she pick up a newly released prisoner, Stephanie—and on the way back the sister asks her to keep the young woman overnight. When Marianne asks Sister Collette what she’s to do with Stephanie, she tells her to “just live.” The women throughout the book are all in some kind of transition. Aren’t we all in some way? Sister Collette halfway house allows recently released women to pick up life skills they missed growing up.
Stephanie does whatever she’s asked, whether it’s walking the dog, cooking a meal (with instructions at first), or opening up about her own needs and fears, and Marianne learns to accept and appreciate the help. As Stephanie comes out of her shell, she gives Marianne perspective about “just living,” a skill they’re both refining at different levels as the days pass.
The story is about women forging communities, improving lives, and becoming stronger with each challenge the narrator and her co-workers and neighbors tackle.
Ellen Barker has written a contemporary, literary novel that celebrates women as well as the neighborhood she grew up in. The plots at work and home are interwoven skillfully, and the plot is created because of what each character wants. I found it beautifully written and filled with explorations and hope. The author has followed the maxim, “Write what you know,” but she’s also taken some creative leaps.
Sometimes the best thing we can do for ourselves is to break out of our comfort zone. Marianne finds real friendships with the new women in her life. This is a wonderful story for women. Enlightened men will enjoy it too.
