Broken Heart

(see: drugs, doing too many). Keep your eyes on the dream, but also on each rung of the ladder. B 56 See alSo: disenchantment • hope, loss of • broken friendship broken friendship See: friend, falling out with your best broken heart As It Is in Heaven Rare is the person who goes through life with their heart Niall WilliamS intact. Once the arrow has flown from Cupid’s bow and struck Jane Eyre its target, quivering with a mischievous thrill, there begins Charlotte Brontë a chemical reaction that despatches its victim on a journey filled with some of life’s most sublime pleasures but also its most tormented pitfalls (see: love, doomed; love, unrequited; lovesickness; falling out of love with love; and, frankly, most of the other ailments in this book). Nine times out of ten,* romance is dashed on the rocks and it all ends in tears. Why so cynical? Because literature bursts with heartbreak like so many aortic aneurisms. You can barely pick up a novel that does not secrete the grief of a failed romance, or the loss of a loved one through death, betrayal or some-such unforeseen disaster. Heartbreak doesn’t just afflict those on the outward journey; it can strike even when you thought you were safely stowed (see also: adultery; divorce; and death of a loved one). Those afflicted have no choice, at least initially, but to sit down with a big box of tissues, another of choco- lates, and a novel that will open up the tear ducts and allow you to cry yourself a river. Heart-rending music could accom- pany your read; some would say this is crucial, especially if you have a tendency to keep your emotions under tight con- trol (see: emotions, inability to express). It works for the father and son in Niall William’s seri- ously hanky-drenching As It Is in Heaven, both still broken hearted and stunned by the deaths in a car crash of Philip’s * Studies have shown that accurate numbers aren’t any more useful than the ones you make up. wife Anne and their ten-year-old daughter some years before. Both being cut from the same cloth, retired tailor Philip and his shy, history teacher son Stephen have retreat- B ed into their separate, solitary worlds, shutting their hearts 57 to one another and everyone else. Indeed Philip can think of little else but giving his money away to the poor and join- ing his wife as quickly as possible, aided and abetted by the cancer he’s been diagnosed with. But once a month, when they meet to play chess, they are enveloped by the music of Puccini. And as we meet the other inhabitants of Ennis, the small town in Ireland where they live, we watch how Stephen finds himself compelled to go to a concert despite driving his car into a ditch on the way – and everything changes overnight. For at the concert he hears Italian violinist Gabriella Costoldi, causing ‘pools’ of ‘clear black sadness’ to fill inside him, and he begins to let out his grief at last. When a thirst for the music becomes a thirst for the musician herself, Stephen’s father Philip plays a pivotal role – because romantic love was the most powerful motivation in his life too. Now his greatest desire is to help Stephen find happiness with Gabriella. And as the sympho- ny builds to its uplifting conclusion, we see how Stephen’s healing brings healing to his father too. Let yourself be swept along for the ride. As this novel shows, the passage of time – and love – does heal. Broken hearts can be redeemed – and for those refusing to give up on their lost love, we prescribe Jane Eyre. When Jane and Rochester’s marriage ceremony is interrupted by the announcement that the owner of Thornfield Hall has a wife already, Jane is too shocked to cry – ‘I seemed to have laid me down in the dried-up bed of a great river,’ she says – although later the ‘full heavy swing’ of the torrent comes. Bereft, she forgives Rochester in an instant when he shows that he still loves her as much as ever. But the better part of her knows that there is neither ‘room nor claim’ for her, and despite the ‘cracking’ of her heartstrings, she tells him she must go. At which point it’s Mr Rochester’s turn to be heartbroken: ‘Jane! . Jane, do you mean to go one way in the world, and to let me go another?’ Was there ever a more heart-rending spelling-out of the pain of parting?† B All is not lost, however, as Jane gets her dark hero in 58 the end – but on her own terms and with her self-respect intact. Mr Rochester, true, is a charred ruin of his former self by this time, but it doesn’t seem to matter. Jane has a for- tune of her own now, which enables them to meet as equals, and she never gets tired of reading out loud to him. Follow Jane’s example: on no account must you attempt to mend your broken heart by compromising your integrity. Better to suffer with dignity than to self-placate in shame. And you never know who might notice and love you all the more for your strength of character and ability to endure. It’s vital to grieve when love is lost. Drop out for a while to do it. (See: cry, in need of a good, for our ten best weepies.) Don’t compromise unwisely in an attempt to make yourself feel better. Cupid will strike again, either with new love or the same love, in new circumstances. And if you decide that you’re better off on your own, there are plenty of solitary pleasures to be had in this book. See alSo: appetite, loss of • cry, in need of a good • despair • divorce • falling out of love with love • hope, loss of • lovesickness • sadness • turmoil • yearning, general broken leg Cleave Being able to move – to walk, to run, by extension to run Nikki Gemmell away – is overrated. There’s much more sense in staying put. But if you’ve broken your leg and are wondering how you will stay sane lying in one place or hobbling around on crutches for the next few weeks, turn to Cleave by Australian novelist Nikki Gemmell. The title of Gemmell’s debut – writ- ten in crisp, inventive prose ever aware of its sounds and contours – is an antagonym, a word that, by a freakish ac- cident of linguistic evolution, also means its own opposite. Muse as you read on the relationship of cleave (‘to split’) to † If there was, send it to us on a postcard, damp with tears. .

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