What do you think?
Rate this book
Elegies for the Brokenhearted
A savvy, spirited, moving, and surprisingly humorous novel in elegies.
Who are the people you’ll never forget? For Mary Murphy, there are five: A skirt-chasing, car-racing uncle with whiskey breath and a three-day beard. A “walking joke, a sitting duck, a fish in a barrel” named Elwood LePoer. A dirt-poor college roommate who conceals an unbearable secret. A failed piano prodigy lost in middle age. A beautiful mother haunted by her once-great aspirations.
In five quirky elegies to lost friends and relatives, Mary tells us the story of her life. We begin with a restless childhood spent following her mother between multiple homes and husbands. Then comes the disappearance of Mary’s rebellious and beloved sister, Malinda. By the time Mary leaves for college, she has no one to write home to, and we follow along on her difficult search for purpose. From a series of miserable jobs to her “reborn” mother’s deathbed, Mary finds hope in the most surprising places. With a rhythmically unique voice and pitch-perfect wry humor, Christie Hodgen spins an unconventional and moving story about identity, belonging, and family.
Who are the people you’ll never forget? For Mary Murphy, there are five: A skirt-chasing, car-racing uncle with whiskey breath and a three-day beard. A “walking joke, a sitting duck, a fish in a barrel” named Elwood LePoer. A dirt-poor college roommate who conceals an unbearable secret. A failed piano prodigy lost in middle age. A beautiful mother haunted by her once-great aspirations.
In five quirky elegies to lost friends and relatives, Mary tells us the story of her life. We begin with a restless childhood spent following her mother between multiple homes and husbands. Then comes the disappearance of Mary’s rebellious and beloved sister, Malinda. By the time Mary leaves for college, she has no one to write home to, and we follow along on her difficult search for purpose. From a series of miserable jobs to her “reborn” mother’s deathbed, Mary finds hope in the most surprising places. With a rhythmically unique voice and pitch-perfect wry humor, Christie Hodgen spins an unconventional and moving story about identity, belonging, and family.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2010
54 people are currently reading
1048 people want to read
About the author
Christie Hodgen
10 books43 followersChristie Hodgen is the author of Elegies for the Brokenhearted; Hello, I Must Be Going; and A Jeweler’s Eye for Flaw. She has won the AWP Award for Short Fiction and the Pushcart Prize. She teaches at the University of Missouri–Kansas City.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 159 reviews
April 5, 2011
Hey check it out, I reviewed this for Gently Read Literature!
***
Elegies for the Brokenhearted begins in a rush and never loses momentum. It's crafted with galloping long sentences, clause within clause within clause, that swerve the reader away and then back and then away again. The characters are so sharp, their scenarios so poignant, their interactions so painful and real… This book is a devastating joy.
It’s a novel in stories—or, more accurately, in elegies—direct addresses by Mary Murphy to five central people in her life, which tell the stories of their lives, or at least those periods where their lives intersected with hers. This nested-story structure is a kind of herky-jerky stop-and-start format that can sometimes be jarring, but Hodgen makes it work beautifully, telling us always the story of Mary while making it look like Mary is telling us the stories of those around her.
Mary herself has lived since childhood in an almost impenetrable halo of silence—silence as rebellion, silence as defensive coping mechanism, silence as sarcastic attack. She always lets others speak for her, or no one at all. And yet the whole book, written in second-person direct address to each person being elegied, seems to be Mary’s attempt to reconcile the silence she’s spent her life ensconced in, to make others see how important they were to her, once it’s too late for it to matter.
Every character herein is consistently striving, reaching out in wrong-headed ways for more, yet secure in the conviction that he is meant for something better, easier, more rarefied. Each person knows that she is infinitely more special than the mundane and bitter circumstances in which she finds herself, time and again. But most of them do nothing to hasten their transfiguration, adding to the general sense of despair and frustration that permeates the novel.
Another marked similarity between the novel’s disparate personalities is how each is obsessed with death. Uncle Mike only gossips about friends who have died. Carson decorates the wall above her bed with a constellation of Polaroids of her deceased relatives. One of Mary’s mother’s dependable morning rituals is reading—and mocking—the obituaries in the local paper. The entire book, of course, stars a cast of characters who have passed away.
One more overarching similarity between everyone is a desperate, suffocating loneliness, coupled with a near-hysterical inability to love. And yet the whole book is a vindication, in a way, of all this sorrow, all this despair. That Mary, who has spent her life silent and resentful, can recollect and reify these small, sad, bitter lives winds up speaking to an inherent beauty in all of us. Her ability to penetrate the layers of meanness, of abuse and anger and petty fury, and to render people real, is a parting gift, a gift to those parted, an indication that, despite everything, for a time they were truly understood.
At one point Mary says, “Even the evocation of loneliness was something undertaken with the purpose of communicating it to someone, who would hear it and perhaps understand it.” This is a beautiful summation of the crux of this sad novel—no matter how alone we are, no matter how we despair, in our private moments, that we will die without ever having made a true connection with another living soul, someone has been watching, someone has been affected. Someone, somewhere, if only for a little while, has understood.
***
Elegies for the Brokenhearted begins in a rush and never loses momentum. It's crafted with galloping long sentences, clause within clause within clause, that swerve the reader away and then back and then away again. The characters are so sharp, their scenarios so poignant, their interactions so painful and real… This book is a devastating joy.
It’s a novel in stories—or, more accurately, in elegies—direct addresses by Mary Murphy to five central people in her life, which tell the stories of their lives, or at least those periods where their lives intersected with hers. This nested-story structure is a kind of herky-jerky stop-and-start format that can sometimes be jarring, but Hodgen makes it work beautifully, telling us always the story of Mary while making it look like Mary is telling us the stories of those around her.
Mary herself has lived since childhood in an almost impenetrable halo of silence—silence as rebellion, silence as defensive coping mechanism, silence as sarcastic attack. She always lets others speak for her, or no one at all. And yet the whole book, written in second-person direct address to each person being elegied, seems to be Mary’s attempt to reconcile the silence she’s spent her life ensconced in, to make others see how important they were to her, once it’s too late for it to matter.
Every character herein is consistently striving, reaching out in wrong-headed ways for more, yet secure in the conviction that he is meant for something better, easier, more rarefied. Each person knows that she is infinitely more special than the mundane and bitter circumstances in which she finds herself, time and again. But most of them do nothing to hasten their transfiguration, adding to the general sense of despair and frustration that permeates the novel.
Another marked similarity between the novel’s disparate personalities is how each is obsessed with death. Uncle Mike only gossips about friends who have died. Carson decorates the wall above her bed with a constellation of Polaroids of her deceased relatives. One of Mary’s mother’s dependable morning rituals is reading—and mocking—the obituaries in the local paper. The entire book, of course, stars a cast of characters who have passed away.
One more overarching similarity between everyone is a desperate, suffocating loneliness, coupled with a near-hysterical inability to love. And yet the whole book is a vindication, in a way, of all this sorrow, all this despair. That Mary, who has spent her life silent and resentful, can recollect and reify these small, sad, bitter lives winds up speaking to an inherent beauty in all of us. Her ability to penetrate the layers of meanness, of abuse and anger and petty fury, and to render people real, is a parting gift, a gift to those parted, an indication that, despite everything, for a time they were truly understood.
At one point Mary says, “Even the evocation of loneliness was something undertaken with the purpose of communicating it to someone, who would hear it and perhaps understand it.” This is a beautiful summation of the crux of this sad novel—no matter how alone we are, no matter how we despair, in our private moments, that we will die without ever having made a true connection with another living soul, someone has been watching, someone has been affected. Someone, somewhere, if only for a little while, has understood.
January 23, 2012
Every now and then, I chance upon a little gem, a novel that captivates me from the very first line and keeps me reading rabidly until the very last sentence. Elegies for the Brokenhearted is such a novel.
Not unlike Spoon River Anthology – the Edgar Lee Masters collection of short free-form poems that collectively describe the lives and losses of deceased members of a small town – Elegies focuses on five characters in a nameless postindustrial city located in New England and narrated by Mary Murphy.
It is organized into five elegies of those who have touched Mary’s life: her hapless young uncle (“every family had one and you were ours: the chump, the slouch, the drunk, the bum, the forever-newly-employed…), an unfortunate neighbor (“Your lot in life, it seemed, was to go through it unawares, your folly a perpetual amusement to others”), her first-year college roommate (“Fat and black, fat and black, did I have any idea you asked, what it meant…”), a gay failed music prodigy (“You believed there would come a day, your turn would come at the head of the line”), and her five-time-married mother (“You were born beautiful in an ailing industrial city, and you learn soon enough that to be a thing of beauty in a place like this is to bear a burden…”)
Ms. Hodgen seamlessly blends second person voice and first person voice – the dead are addressed as “you” and the book is narrated in the “I” voice. Each portrait is perfectly realized, poignantly rendered, sympathetically told, in prose that is nothing less than incantatory. All of these vignettes – particularly of Carson Washington, the narrator’s memorable college roommate who bears a heavy burden and is deliberately flunking out of school as a result – are heartbreaking and incredibly portrayed.
At the end of the day, Ms. Hodgen implies, it is really all about connections: “What impressed me most was how similar our lives were – yours, mine, and everyone we knew—and how little we’d noticed the connections. We had all known joy and then lost it had blindly sought after it again; we had taken up burdens and carried them for a time, then stumbled beneath them; we had made strides and then lapsed; we had taken strange paths that sometimes delivered us to safety and sometimes led us astray…”
This is a book about how family and friends can tear us down and build us up, how losses can diminish us and yet add to our realization of life, and how we find “purpose” in the most unlikely places. For those who crave character-driven novels with shades of gray, where answers are hard-won, and where every one has a chance at redemption, this is the book for you.
Not unlike Spoon River Anthology – the Edgar Lee Masters collection of short free-form poems that collectively describe the lives and losses of deceased members of a small town – Elegies focuses on five characters in a nameless postindustrial city located in New England and narrated by Mary Murphy.
It is organized into five elegies of those who have touched Mary’s life: her hapless young uncle (“every family had one and you were ours: the chump, the slouch, the drunk, the bum, the forever-newly-employed…), an unfortunate neighbor (“Your lot in life, it seemed, was to go through it unawares, your folly a perpetual amusement to others”), her first-year college roommate (“Fat and black, fat and black, did I have any idea you asked, what it meant…”), a gay failed music prodigy (“You believed there would come a day, your turn would come at the head of the line”), and her five-time-married mother (“You were born beautiful in an ailing industrial city, and you learn soon enough that to be a thing of beauty in a place like this is to bear a burden…”)
Ms. Hodgen seamlessly blends second person voice and first person voice – the dead are addressed as “you” and the book is narrated in the “I” voice. Each portrait is perfectly realized, poignantly rendered, sympathetically told, in prose that is nothing less than incantatory. All of these vignettes – particularly of Carson Washington, the narrator’s memorable college roommate who bears a heavy burden and is deliberately flunking out of school as a result – are heartbreaking and incredibly portrayed.
At the end of the day, Ms. Hodgen implies, it is really all about connections: “What impressed me most was how similar our lives were – yours, mine, and everyone we knew—and how little we’d noticed the connections. We had all known joy and then lost it had blindly sought after it again; we had taken up burdens and carried them for a time, then stumbled beneath them; we had made strides and then lapsed; we had taken strange paths that sometimes delivered us to safety and sometimes led us astray…”
This is a book about how family and friends can tear us down and build us up, how losses can diminish us and yet add to our realization of life, and how we find “purpose” in the most unlikely places. For those who crave character-driven novels with shades of gray, where answers are hard-won, and where every one has a chance at redemption, this is the book for you.
May 11, 2011
You were a novel about loss and I did not want to read you. Every time I looked for a new book to read, you came up on lists and I still did not want to read you. You seemed smart and nice, but I just wasn't that into you. It wasn't you, it was me.
Finally, I just said "F-- it," and said OK. You rushed to my kindle in no time flat, and that was it. I was hooked. All those lists were right and maybe even know me better than I know myself. Damn lists.
It turns out you weren't only about loss. You were about seeing yourself through others' eyes. And the impact that relationships (friends, enemies, family) have on a person. And now that you're gone, I miss you. Maybe I'm even a slightly better person for having read you. Only time will tell.
Finally, I just said "F-- it," and said OK. You rushed to my kindle in no time flat, and that was it. I was hooked. All those lists were right and maybe even know me better than I know myself. Damn lists.
It turns out you weren't only about loss. You were about seeing yourself through others' eyes. And the impact that relationships (friends, enemies, family) have on a person. And now that you're gone, I miss you. Maybe I'm even a slightly better person for having read you. Only time will tell.
March 17, 2012
Wow, I loved the writing in this – absolute perfection. In this book we watch the protagonist Mary Murphy move from childhood into adulthood, quite a long span given the number of pages. Mary had a dysfunctional upbringing but the “hook” is her story is told through the elegies she writes for five people who figured prominently in her life. Genius, right? Because we are so very defined by the relationships we have. There are a host of quotable passages in this book. So often I stopped just to appreciate a particular phrase or sentence or paragraph. That rarely happens with me. The writing is superior.
I was obsessed with some of the characters, like her college roommate. Carson would not leave my brain. And I enjoyed the commentary/digs at the unnamed college that is clearly UVA…her observations are basically the reasons I struck it from my list when deciding where to go myself (though my friends from there definitely don’t fit the stereotype/mold displayed in this book). Anyway, I found myself thinking about Carson long after I closed the book.
There is one elegy that goes to an obvious place, but the narrator does acknowledge this. Still, that’s why this is 4 stars instead of 5. Elegies is not an uplifting story. If you’re looking for light-hearted romance that will leave you feeling joyful, do not pick up this book. But if you want a real, fantastically written, heartbreaking novel with an interesting narrative structure, this is beautiful and greatly affecting. So happy to have found this book.
I was obsessed with some of the characters, like her college roommate. Carson would not leave my brain. And I enjoyed the commentary/digs at the unnamed college that is clearly UVA…her observations are basically the reasons I struck it from my list when deciding where to go myself (though my friends from there definitely don’t fit the stereotype/mold displayed in this book). Anyway, I found myself thinking about Carson long after I closed the book.
There is one elegy that goes to an obvious place, but the narrator does acknowledge this. Still, that’s why this is 4 stars instead of 5. Elegies is not an uplifting story. If you’re looking for light-hearted romance that will leave you feeling joyful, do not pick up this book. But if you want a real, fantastically written, heartbreaking novel with an interesting narrative structure, this is beautiful and greatly affecting. So happy to have found this book.
September 5, 2017
4.5 stars. A very random find. I loved it, and was thus more frustrated by a few troublesome areas....an overly long middle chapter that felt in need of a stern red pen (which made me realize, at this late stage in my life, that cuckoo clocks are creepy).
The dynamic between two sisters -- one wild, one meek, one bad, one good, etc...etc...keeps coming up in books I'm reading this year. And the now cliched unstable, beautiful, narcissistic, unstable (yes) serial monogamist mother, dragging the sisters through a series of I do to I don't marriages/step fathers.
The depressed and lonely main character was nevertheless believable, and not unlikable (another cliche these days, thank you Gone Girl, etc....for the proliferation of unlikable, unreliable female narrators. Who knew I would miss breezy Bridget Jones?). I guess happy, functional families make for boring books.
Considering all of the above, the bones of the book were solid: a chapter per elegy, a total of five compounding deaths in the young character's life.
The title itself is a spoiler of sorts (yep! My kind of book, death and heartbreak, right on the cover!).
There were passages of writing that were five star, breathtaking yet understated, that provided a warp and weft that kept it all together for me.
It looks like Hodgen is in academia now, which is a bonus for her students. I wish she had continued to write fiction.
The dynamic between two sisters -- one wild, one meek, one bad, one good, etc...etc...keeps coming up in books I'm reading this year. And the now cliched unstable, beautiful, narcissistic, unstable (yes) serial monogamist mother, dragging the sisters through a series of I do to I don't marriages/step fathers.
The depressed and lonely main character was nevertheless believable, and not unlikable (another cliche these days, thank you Gone Girl, etc....for the proliferation of unlikable, unreliable female narrators. Who knew I would miss breezy Bridget Jones?). I guess happy, functional families make for boring books.
Considering all of the above, the bones of the book were solid: a chapter per elegy, a total of five compounding deaths in the young character's life.
The title itself is a spoiler of sorts (yep! My kind of book, death and heartbreak, right on the cover!).
There were passages of writing that were five star, breathtaking yet understated, that provided a warp and weft that kept it all together for me.
It looks like Hodgen is in academia now, which is a bonus for her students. I wish she had continued to write fiction.
October 31, 2010
There are so many great things I like about this novel . First, I think the title is great. I really like the concept of the elegy and Hodgen uses this to structure the work. The book is told in five stories--five elegies--about people in Mary Murphy's life who have passed away: her favorite uncle, Mike; her classmate, Elwood; her college roommate, Carson; her strange acquaintance and saving grace, James; and her mother, Maggie. Therefore, there is no linear storyline, per se. Rather, you learn about Mary via these other individuals. (This reminds me of Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge).
Hodgen uses 1st person, but because of the elegy structure, the narration actually feels more like 2nd person. In each of the elegies, Mary is speaking to the dead person, so the bulk of the narration is "You did this" and "You said that." Since 2nd person is so rarely used, I found the narrative voice unique and disarming (but in a good way).
Lastly, this is ultimately the tale of dysfunctional family but the dark tale is interspersed with moments of grace and humor.
This was a random book I grabbed at the library and I'm so happy I did. Hodgen is a very talented writer and I most certainly will be reading her other books.
Hodgen uses 1st person, but because of the elegy structure, the narration actually feels more like 2nd person. In each of the elegies, Mary is speaking to the dead person, so the bulk of the narration is "You did this" and "You said that." Since 2nd person is so rarely used, I found the narrative voice unique and disarming (but in a good way).
Lastly, this is ultimately the tale of dysfunctional family but the dark tale is interspersed with moments of grace and humor.
This was a random book I grabbed at the library and I'm so happy I did. Hodgen is a very talented writer and I most certainly will be reading her other books.
January 31, 2012
I ordered this novel after hearing it reviewed on NPR, and it was a pleasure from start to finish. I enjoyed the unique structure, elegies for five people that the protagonist knew over the course of her short life, all of whom died. She manages to sustain a narrative arc that's actually rather traditional and linear in spite of this unusual set-up, but also to achieve that short story quality of zeroing in on particular moments. I really liked the five eulogized characters, especially her tragic college roommate and a strange pianist with whom she briefly lives after school, and I also liked the protagonist. It's really a coming of age story, but in such a different form that it feels fresh. (Well, I like coming of age stories anyhow, so I wasn't complaining). Her ear for different voices is fantastic. This was one of those books where I often stopped myself to appreciate a particularly insightful moment, beautifully phrased. I didn't want it to end.
December 5, 2010
oh what a great novel about a family that has its problems. mom gets divorced too much, big sis takes off and nobody knows where to, uncle was kind of nice for a drunk asshole, little sis goes to college and starts a miserable single teacher's life, but then you come to the realization that the only way you will be able to make it through this so-called life is to try and be nice and human to your friends and family. don't give up on them or yourself, you.
August 15, 2010
Spectacular writing. I've been waiting for this book without knowing of it.
February 13, 2015
Mary, die Icherzählerin, erinnert sich an fünf Wegbegleiter in ihrem Leben, die alle nicht alt wurden. Mary hatte schon als kleines Mädchen ein feines Ohr für die Andeutungen und Untertöne in den Gesprächen der Erwachsenen. Sie spürt schon früh, wie ihre kleine Welt aus dem Ruder läuft. Ihr Onkel Michael starb mit 37 Jahren an einer Überdosis. Mary richtet im ersten Abschnitt ihre Worte direkt an Michael. Michaels Vater hatte eine Witwe mit drei Töchtern geheiratet, von denen eine die Mutter der Erzählerin war. Michael war also der Halbbruder von Marys flatterhafter Mutter Margaret, die allein fünf Mal verheiratet war. Als Fremder bräuchte man ein Handbuch, um diese Familie zu verstehen, hatte Michael dazu gesagt. Er war der Chaot der Familie, aus gesundheitlichen Gründen vom Militärdienst freigestellt und kam beruflich auf keinen grünen Zweig. Doch Michael war auch der sichere Hafen für Mary und ihre Schwester, deren flatterhafte Mutter ihre Töchter nur als Ballast empfand. Hätte Michael nur rechtzeitig einmal jemand gesagt, dass er mit seiner Zuwendung zu den kleinen Mädchen als soziale Vaterfigur ein einziges Mal etwas Gutes erreicht hat, hätte sein Leben vielleicht eine andere Wendung genommen.
Weitere Figuren, deren Bedeutung für ihren Lebensweg Mary zum Zeitpunkt der Begegnung noch nicht abschätzen kann, sind ihre Zimmernachbarin Carson am College, ein homosexueller Barpianist, ihr Schulkamerad Elwood und ihre Mutter; deren Lebenswandel zum Zerbrechen der Familie führt und die beiden Schwestern für Jahre voneinander trennt.
Carson geht eines Tages einfach aus Marys Leben und beide ahnen nicht, dass Carson nur ein kurzes Leben bestimmt sein wird. Elwood hat Marys Leben allein dadurch verändert, dass Mutter und Töchter einmal nicht mit ihm im Auto fuhren und Margaret dadurch ihren dritten (?) Mann kennenlernte, der sich erstaunliche Gedanken um Marys Entwicklung und ihre Bildung machte. Armut und Engstirnigkeit sind Thema des Buches, wie auch der Wunsch junger Leute, aus der Provinz nach New York zu kommen.
Die ungesagten Worte an Marys Onkel Michael ragten für mich aus den fünf Texten besonders heraus. Vermutlich sind jedem Situationen vertraut, in denen man einem überraschend Verstorbenen gern gesagt hätte, was diese Person einem bedeutet hat. Mary richtet sich zwar direkt und ungeschminkt an ihre fünf Weggefährten, indirekt erzählt ihre Sicht der für sie wichtigen Menschen jedoch ihr eigenes Leben.
Man könnte es so sehen, dass Christie Hodgen ein Buch über Verlierer geschrieben hat. Ich sehe es jedoch als bemerkenswertes Buch über ungesagte Worte und über die erstaunliche Kraft, mit der sich manche Menschen wie Münchhausen aus dem Sumpf überraschend aus aussichtslosen sozialen Verhältnissen retten können.
Weitere Figuren, deren Bedeutung für ihren Lebensweg Mary zum Zeitpunkt der Begegnung noch nicht abschätzen kann, sind ihre Zimmernachbarin Carson am College, ein homosexueller Barpianist, ihr Schulkamerad Elwood und ihre Mutter; deren Lebenswandel zum Zerbrechen der Familie führt und die beiden Schwestern für Jahre voneinander trennt.
Carson geht eines Tages einfach aus Marys Leben und beide ahnen nicht, dass Carson nur ein kurzes Leben bestimmt sein wird. Elwood hat Marys Leben allein dadurch verändert, dass Mutter und Töchter einmal nicht mit ihm im Auto fuhren und Margaret dadurch ihren dritten (?) Mann kennenlernte, der sich erstaunliche Gedanken um Marys Entwicklung und ihre Bildung machte. Armut und Engstirnigkeit sind Thema des Buches, wie auch der Wunsch junger Leute, aus der Provinz nach New York zu kommen.
Die ungesagten Worte an Marys Onkel Michael ragten für mich aus den fünf Texten besonders heraus. Vermutlich sind jedem Situationen vertraut, in denen man einem überraschend Verstorbenen gern gesagt hätte, was diese Person einem bedeutet hat. Mary richtet sich zwar direkt und ungeschminkt an ihre fünf Weggefährten, indirekt erzählt ihre Sicht der für sie wichtigen Menschen jedoch ihr eigenes Leben.
Man könnte es so sehen, dass Christie Hodgen ein Buch über Verlierer geschrieben hat. Ich sehe es jedoch als bemerkenswertes Buch über ungesagte Worte und über die erstaunliche Kraft, mit der sich manche Menschen wie Münchhausen aus dem Sumpf überraschend aus aussichtslosen sozialen Verhältnissen retten können.
February 11, 2014
I really think this is a five star book; I just tend to be stingy with my star ratings. This is actually five vignettes of five people from the author's life. Each made a difference in some way, some seemingly of minor consequence. Yet, the author apparently felt these people made such significant impacts that they needed to be acknowledged. She does a phenomenal job of coloring the lives of these people; some presentations are painful to read, and, I am sure, were very painful to have lived. Yet, she remarkably acknowledges them; they have lived: they made some impact. We are have known such people, and we may ponder them in our memories. Hodgen gives them new life and offers them as a reminder of how we all impact or influence others, sometimes in a way we never realize.
July 31, 2011
The narrator's isolation and somewhat distanced perspective reminded me of The Bell Jar--although it feels more optimistic overall. There are really perceptive and at times crushing passages on how people relate (or fail to relate) to each other. 2nd person is common throughout, which I found a refreshing change of pace. The sentence structure is often distended, but the text remains energized and engaging.
I loved reading this book. Would recommend it to literary fiction fans.
I loved reading this book. Would recommend it to literary fiction fans.
March 23, 2012
You can often tell a lot about someone by what they think of others. In Christie Hodgen's novel, there are five elegies written by Mary Murphy about five people who had an influence on her life. The prose is powerful and compelling, as more is revealed about Mary's own difficult life. This book will knock your proverbial socks off!
September 5, 2010
Equally poignant to HELLO, I MUST BE GOING. This woman can write dysfunctional families like nobody's business. A coming-of-age story embedded in the stories of five friends/family members lives who died during the course of the book (off scene). Vivid and vibrant and touching and profound.
September 29, 2017
Interesting premise - five elegies written for different people in the main character's life - but just too depressing. Almost nothing remotely positive happens in anyone's life in the whole book. Just drugs, abandonment, mental illness, etc.
July 6, 2022
Original, tight, smart, funny, and achingly insightful.
September 20, 2017
What a book!
I am so glad I happened across this gorgeous, heartbreaking, and yet ultimately hopeful novel. Elegies for the Brokenhearted consists of five interwoven short stories, elegies that fit together like puzzle pieces ultimately forming the whole of protagonist Mary Murphy's life. Through the stories of five pivotal people in her history, all of whom died untimely deaths, we learn about Mary and her sister's troubled upbringing and about their mother, who dragged her daughters along through a string of boyfriends and failed marriages.
Most of us can't identify with Mary's situation, yet Hodgen manages to make Mary's story feel like our own, with thoughts and emotions about family and human connection that each of us can understand and relate to. For me, Elegies for the Brokenhearted was a perfect combination of thought-provoking ideas and a page turning storyline. I was riveted by the plot and literally couldn't put the book down -- At the same time, I was blown away by the spare beauty of Hodgen's writing, the deeper meaning in the book's characters and their experiences, and the explosive, heart-wrenching endings of her elegies. (The book's ending, FYI, is jaw-dropping.)
The New York Times called this novel 'the literary equivalent of a hand grenade' and that's a perfect way to describe it. You'll find yourself drawn into the story and then beautifully stunned by its structure, its characters, its plot, and its truths. Elegies for the Brokenhearted is the kind of book that's ripe for discussion and dissection and would be ideal for a book club or a college-level course.
I am so glad I happened across this gorgeous, heartbreaking, and yet ultimately hopeful novel. Elegies for the Brokenhearted consists of five interwoven short stories, elegies that fit together like puzzle pieces ultimately forming the whole of protagonist Mary Murphy's life. Through the stories of five pivotal people in her history, all of whom died untimely deaths, we learn about Mary and her sister's troubled upbringing and about their mother, who dragged her daughters along through a string of boyfriends and failed marriages.
Most of us can't identify with Mary's situation, yet Hodgen manages to make Mary's story feel like our own, with thoughts and emotions about family and human connection that each of us can understand and relate to. For me, Elegies for the Brokenhearted was a perfect combination of thought-provoking ideas and a page turning storyline. I was riveted by the plot and literally couldn't put the book down -- At the same time, I was blown away by the spare beauty of Hodgen's writing, the deeper meaning in the book's characters and their experiences, and the explosive, heart-wrenching endings of her elegies. (The book's ending, FYI, is jaw-dropping.)
The New York Times called this novel 'the literary equivalent of a hand grenade' and that's a perfect way to describe it. You'll find yourself drawn into the story and then beautifully stunned by its structure, its characters, its plot, and its truths. Elegies for the Brokenhearted is the kind of book that's ripe for discussion and dissection and would be ideal for a book club or a college-level course.
December 22, 2025
I just didn't love it as much as most people did. To start with an elegy is a lament for the dead. I sort of expected them to say good things about the dead people (or maybe that's only eulogies?) At any rate these are really warts and all descriptions of a set of very flawed characters. I didn't find any of them likeable and some are down right despicable. She did not succeed in making most of them very sympathetic characters, so why should I care about them? And it seems like an overstatement to call this a novel. It does not have any plot, any more than a biography does. Just little vignettes of these people's messed up lives in a poor rural town.
I just bought it for the lovely title. But the book is pretty dreary and depressing, with nothing much positive happening. And it felt over written -- descriptive paragraphs that went on and on until I was saying yeah, yeah I got it and sliding through the rest.
I just bought it for the lovely title. But the book is pretty dreary and depressing, with nothing much positive happening. And it felt over written -- descriptive paragraphs that went on and on until I was saying yeah, yeah I got it and sliding through the rest.
September 5, 2022
This book made me sad. This book isn’t even necessarily a sob story, it’s more likened to the feeling of nothing. This book felt like walking, observing what’s around you, without really seeing. Functioning, not living. This book feels like what it’s like when my mental health is not at it’s best. I felt some aspect of every single elegy in the depths of my stomach, and I desperately want to enroll every single character in therapy.
That being said… those factors don’t make it a bad book. The characters are still very real, and you can easily empathize. Elegy #4 was my favorite.
I could’ve given this book 5 stars, but I didn’t because the writing didn’t feel “knock your socks off” good.
Ok, gonna go read a WW2 era historical fiction to recover from this one.
That being said… those factors don’t make it a bad book. The characters are still very real, and you can easily empathize. Elegy #4 was my favorite.
I could’ve given this book 5 stars, but I didn’t because the writing didn’t feel “knock your socks off” good.
Ok, gonna go read a WW2 era historical fiction to recover from this one.
October 8, 2023
3.5 stars. I wish I could rate the elegies separately, because they didn't all have the same emotional impact on me. The ones for her uncle and her mom were definitely 5 stars. They were devastating and beautiful and had me in tears (especially the elegy for her mom, so sad!). The elegy for James, the composer, was also really sad, and I found his character to be a very interesting one. The writing is very flowery, which I didn't mind most of the time, but there were times when I felt like I got the point of a passage, but it just kept going. I think things could have been kept a bit more succinct while still sounding beautiful. I also thought there was a bit of an overuse of parentheses. Overall, though, this was a great read that I think will stick with me for a while.
February 19, 2019
A deadly beautiful work about people whose balloons rise and then pop, just out of reach. How much love there is in the world, coated over by sadness and falseness, but it's there, as one character says, in the everyday kindnesses we bestow upon each other--making lunch, finding socks, getting you to school on time. The organically connected elegies are like a prism into the protagonist, Mary Murphy. The sentences are tight and expansive simultaneously, and as craft, the feat of a work with so much second person is accomplished in great style. How?? It's magic. Superb, superb, superb
February 29, 2012
Elegies For the Brokenhearted by Christie Hodgen is a compilation of stories about Mary and the people in her life who were most important to her. Each story is told through an elegy written after the person's death. In this way we learn about the people she loved and her own life as well.
The first elegy is about her uncle Mike, the `loser' in the family. "Every family had one and you were ours: the chump, the slouch, the drunk, the bum, the forever-newly-employed...and the forever-newly-unemployed", a chain-smoker with a car named Michelle. Uncle Mike comes knocking on Mary's mother's door one day and ends up staying for months. He's found himself in love for the first time and his heart has been broken. Uncle Mike is the uncle of every child's dream whether he was playing Santa Claus, taking Mary for a wild ride, or being a parent to her while her mother worked full-time and spent her evenings out on dates. Mike was 37 when he died.
"Elwood LePoer, your head was a brick, a block, a lollipop. You were dumb as a stick, a sock, a bag of rocks. Your lot in life, it seemed, was to go through it unawares, your folly a perpetual amusement to others. In our dead-end school you were the village idiot, and we stood around talking about you, your latest foibles, like the weather." Elwood is a born loser and Mary realizes that poverty shaped both him and her. To be poor as a child is to be poor forever. "To be poor, it marked a person, it cast its shadow across the whole of her life." In Elwood's elegy we learn about the flippancy and utter shallowness of Mary's mother as she embarks on her fifth marriage. We also discover that Mary is attempting to escape her lot in life by attending college. Despite the fact that she has escaped her town, she states "How strange it was to realize that everyone I had known, everything I had seen and done, was still with me. How closely, after all, we were bound together." Elwood was 19 years old when he died.
"Fat and black, fat and black, did I have any goddamn idea, you asked, what it meant to be fat, to be black, any goddamn idea what a drag it was sometimes..." "You were the fattest person I had ever seen, so fat I wondered how you moved." Carson Washington was Mary's new college roommate, a woman who talked all the time except when she was watching television. Carson didn't have any interest in school even though she was there on a full scholarship. She flunked out after one semester. That was the last time Mary saw her but Carson left an indelible impression on Mary. She was as grand in her mind and intellect as she was in her girth. Carson was 21 years old at the time of her death.
James Butler, 42 years old when he died, grew up in Arkansas and left as soon as he was able to attend Juilliard School of Music to study music composition. Growing up, he felt different. He didn't like boy-type things. He liked reading and listening to music. Every day he wore a suit to school "and when the other boys passed you by on their way to and from the woods, they called out to you the worst name they knew - Fairy! - and the word and its name became one." "They knew already, you were not a proper boy." As Mary searches for her sister Malinda, who she has not seen in five years, she meets James in Maine. They befriend one another to a certain degree though James is a man of solitude and haughtiness. You had just finished college and wanted to patch things up with your sister. Carson's death had touched you profoundly and priorities were becoming somewhat clearer. James takes you under his wing to an extent and helps you find a room and a job. At one time he was a prodigy, but when he died all he left were twenty years of notebooks, filled with musical compositions that he had scratched out. "If your work made one thing clear to me, it was that your life was a battle. Essentially you had withdrawn into your work, into solitude, and yet what was your work but an effort to communicate, to be understood?"
Margaret Murphy Collins Francis Adams Witherspoon was Mary's mother. She lived till the age of 51. A narcissistic beauty, she felt entitled to money, fame, love and adoration. What she found, instead, was a series of unfulfilled relationships with men and her own daughters. At 20, still a child at heart, she has her first daughter and is unable to bond with her. Shortly afterwards she has Mary and is unable to bond with her either. Most likely she was suffering from post-partem depression. "You grow bitter. You believe you have suffered like no one else, that you have been cheated, and you mean to have your revenge in whatever little ways you can find." You don't pay your bills, you can't hold a job, you move through men, you are bored easily and you are impulsive. " We lived a life whose only certainty was that it would change - just when we'd settle in, just when we'd gotten comfortable, the lights would go down and the scene would be cleared away."It is not until you find Pastor Witherspoon and find God that you seem to calm down and accept life. However, you don't have any contact with your own children for years at a time.
This is an amazing gem of a book, one that I treasure. Ms. Hodgen's writing is spectacular and it is in the little things that she finds the larger connections that make up the importance of life. Each of these elegies is an homage to the frailties and failings of the human spirit along with the desire to transcend through hopes and dreams.
The first elegy is about her uncle Mike, the `loser' in the family. "Every family had one and you were ours: the chump, the slouch, the drunk, the bum, the forever-newly-employed...and the forever-newly-unemployed", a chain-smoker with a car named Michelle. Uncle Mike comes knocking on Mary's mother's door one day and ends up staying for months. He's found himself in love for the first time and his heart has been broken. Uncle Mike is the uncle of every child's dream whether he was playing Santa Claus, taking Mary for a wild ride, or being a parent to her while her mother worked full-time and spent her evenings out on dates. Mike was 37 when he died.
"Elwood LePoer, your head was a brick, a block, a lollipop. You were dumb as a stick, a sock, a bag of rocks. Your lot in life, it seemed, was to go through it unawares, your folly a perpetual amusement to others. In our dead-end school you were the village idiot, and we stood around talking about you, your latest foibles, like the weather." Elwood is a born loser and Mary realizes that poverty shaped both him and her. To be poor as a child is to be poor forever. "To be poor, it marked a person, it cast its shadow across the whole of her life." In Elwood's elegy we learn about the flippancy and utter shallowness of Mary's mother as she embarks on her fifth marriage. We also discover that Mary is attempting to escape her lot in life by attending college. Despite the fact that she has escaped her town, she states "How strange it was to realize that everyone I had known, everything I had seen and done, was still with me. How closely, after all, we were bound together." Elwood was 19 years old when he died.
"Fat and black, fat and black, did I have any goddamn idea, you asked, what it meant to be fat, to be black, any goddamn idea what a drag it was sometimes..." "You were the fattest person I had ever seen, so fat I wondered how you moved." Carson Washington was Mary's new college roommate, a woman who talked all the time except when she was watching television. Carson didn't have any interest in school even though she was there on a full scholarship. She flunked out after one semester. That was the last time Mary saw her but Carson left an indelible impression on Mary. She was as grand in her mind and intellect as she was in her girth. Carson was 21 years old at the time of her death.
James Butler, 42 years old when he died, grew up in Arkansas and left as soon as he was able to attend Juilliard School of Music to study music composition. Growing up, he felt different. He didn't like boy-type things. He liked reading and listening to music. Every day he wore a suit to school "and when the other boys passed you by on their way to and from the woods, they called out to you the worst name they knew - Fairy! - and the word and its name became one." "They knew already, you were not a proper boy." As Mary searches for her sister Malinda, who she has not seen in five years, she meets James in Maine. They befriend one another to a certain degree though James is a man of solitude and haughtiness. You had just finished college and wanted to patch things up with your sister. Carson's death had touched you profoundly and priorities were becoming somewhat clearer. James takes you under his wing to an extent and helps you find a room and a job. At one time he was a prodigy, but when he died all he left were twenty years of notebooks, filled with musical compositions that he had scratched out. "If your work made one thing clear to me, it was that your life was a battle. Essentially you had withdrawn into your work, into solitude, and yet what was your work but an effort to communicate, to be understood?"
Margaret Murphy Collins Francis Adams Witherspoon was Mary's mother. She lived till the age of 51. A narcissistic beauty, she felt entitled to money, fame, love and adoration. What she found, instead, was a series of unfulfilled relationships with men and her own daughters. At 20, still a child at heart, she has her first daughter and is unable to bond with her. Shortly afterwards she has Mary and is unable to bond with her either. Most likely she was suffering from post-partem depression. "You grow bitter. You believe you have suffered like no one else, that you have been cheated, and you mean to have your revenge in whatever little ways you can find." You don't pay your bills, you can't hold a job, you move through men, you are bored easily and you are impulsive. " We lived a life whose only certainty was that it would change - just when we'd settle in, just when we'd gotten comfortable, the lights would go down and the scene would be cleared away."It is not until you find Pastor Witherspoon and find God that you seem to calm down and accept life. However, you don't have any contact with your own children for years at a time.
This is an amazing gem of a book, one that I treasure. Ms. Hodgen's writing is spectacular and it is in the little things that she finds the larger connections that make up the importance of life. Each of these elegies is an homage to the frailties and failings of the human spirit along with the desire to transcend through hopes and dreams.
August 17, 2017
The five people Mary Murphy devotes her five elegies to are all troubled, struggling people on the edges of society, as Mary herself mostly is. The vivid, truly original and imaginative characterizations (American, mostly blue collar, an assortment of gay, white and black), the unique format, and the superb writing give this great appeal for the literary fiction reader.
October 24, 2017
Christie Hodgen is a wonderful writers. In this book, we follow the lives of five people in Mary Murphy's life, all eccentric and surreal. In her "elegies" to each of these five, the reader learns a lot about the life of Mary Murphy.
Hodgen makes us laugh outloud as well as feel sad and moved by the many quirks and turns of this book. A very nice read.
Hodgen makes us laugh outloud as well as feel sad and moved by the many quirks and turns of this book. A very nice read.
November 8, 2017
this one started well but went way downhill. I liked the first two elegies: a close look at a childhood "friend" of the narrator who caused problems but saved her in a way, and then her college roommate, a fascinating person. After that the portraits thinned and the narrator herself got less interesting. By the last elegy, I was skimming.
August 11, 2025
engaging, inventive narrator who sees the world with a jaundiced eye and knows she belongs right there in it. told in 4 sections, all well-done (if not a little bloated) except the last one, which seems to not have the same quality of observation and skates through at a swift and ultimately not satisfying pace.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 31, 2023
Beautiful languaging that totally immerses us into the scenes IN the characters' skins.
Part melancholy, hopelessness, dysfunction and despair, and part optimism, hopefulness, renewal and connection.
Part melancholy, hopelessness, dysfunction and despair, and part optimism, hopefulness, renewal and connection.
October 8, 2017
Pretty close to top 10 all time for me, a stunning portrait of the losses a young girl endures
March 16, 2019
Bought and read this strictly because I loved the title. I thought it was brilliant. I’m so glad I read it. I don’t think I will ever forget these people.
February 12, 2020
This was really lovely. Having the book in five parts (for each of the five persons elegized) made it easy to read over 5 days.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 159 reviews