One-hit-wonder writer Sam lives a life of twenty-first century of cynicism and mental malaise. He’s known happiness in the past, but is much more likely to complain about all the bad times in his life. His literary career even hinges on a memoir of his years as a teen-aged drug addict. But, in Broken People by Sam Lansky, Sam has a chance to “fix” himself. And who wouldn’t take a chance to fix the broken parts of themselves? Sam’s problem is that this fix comes at the hands of a self-styled shaman. Will he be able to put aside his very chic disbelief for a chance to heal himself?
I have to be honest. For the first third of the book, I found Sam insufferable. He whines. He wallows. He is always focused on the negative parts of his life. Sure, he knows that he’s insufferable, but Sam figures that he’s doomed to be an insecure, body-hating, impostor-syndrome-having gay man. When he talks to his similarly afflicted (apart from the homosexuality) friend Kat, they sort of but not really joke about how broken they are. Yet for all of his negativity, Sam joins a new friend in meeting with a shaman. Yup. A shaman. Jacob freely admits to borrowing methods from indigenous people all over the Americas and to making heavy use of ayahuasca in his ceremonies. He claims that he can (with some slight caveats) fix people in three days. Most of Broken People takes place over three chronological days, but it feels longer than that because Sam goes on a journey through his memories. Sam visits events in his life where he hurt and was hurt by the important men in his life. Every memory takes him closer to the root of his brokenness.
Because this book is all about Sam’s issues, it’s hard not to try and diagnose Sam. There were all kinds of labels I could have applied to Sam, based on my one semester of Psychology 101. I wasn’t wrong, entirely. The more I read about Sam’s life, the more I empathized with him. (I also confirmed that I am definitely not therapist material.) Reading Broken People was a bit of a chore at first, until I started to see glimpses of the deeply loving, quirky Sam that was buried under layers of coping and defense mechanisms. There was a moment when Sam, reviewing a particularly excruciating memory, wishes he could reach out and slap some sense into his younger self. That moment completely one me over to Sam.
It feels ironic that I read this book just a few weeks after discovering the Am I the Asshole? and Just No MIL (Mother-in-Law) subreddits, in which people reveal all kinds of self-destructive, delusional behavior. (I started reading them for the schadenfreude. I’m not proud of this.) In thinking about all of that bad behavior that I didn’t understand I realized that Broken People has done its job. Now, when I read another bizarre story from the depths of Reddit, I will always wonder about the damaged person inside of layers of thoughts and actions that make fed-up people ask strangers on the internet for advice.
Notes for bibliotherapeutic use: Recommend to readers who have people in their lives who are constantly self-sabotaging. It might give them a little bit of hope that these people might someday find a way to heal.