Broken

A "bold, prescient, engaging" novel about the breakdown of a British suburban community in the aftermath of a violent crime (The Guardian).

Until that fateful afternoon, Skunk Cunningham had been a normal little girl, playing on the curb in front of her house. Rick Buck­ley had been a normal geeky teen­ager, hosing off his brand-new car. Bob Oswald had been a normal sociopathic single father of five slutty daughters, charging furiously down the side­walk. Then Bob was beating Rick to a bloody pulp, right there in the Buckleys' driveway, and life on Drummond Square was never the same again.


Inspired by Harper Lee's classic To Kill a Mockingbird, Clay's brilliantly observed and darkly funny novel follows the sudden unraveling of a sub­urban community after a single act of thoughtless cruelty.


"Beautifully written." —Booklist

"Broken is surprising, shocking, and cruelly funny at times. It's an unforgettable book." —Scott Helm, author of Mysterious Skin and We Disappear

"Clay succeeds in inciting pity even for a murderer [and his] triumph is in exploring the kindness and love that might heal and restore—and what it is to feel fully alive." —The Independent

"Daniel Clay tells the truth about childhood in the modern world, and captures all the elements of a great novel: suspense, desperation, love, and death." —Amy Bryant, author of Polly

"Funny and sad and moving." —The Observer