Jean is a sixty something house-sitter who works for an agency which send her out to stay in people’s homes while they are absent through travel or family business or a temporary relocation. After the death of her mother, Jean found her niche living in others’ houses and tending to their plants, animals and possessions since she had nothing of her own. Between jobs she stays at a boarding house that is merely a waiting place to die or go somewhere else. Now she finds herself in a magnificent estate filled with history and heirlooms and many precious items.

Her instructions are to live in the smallest room of the house, clean daily using a feather duster lest she disturb a valuable object, watch only the smallest television and be sure to unplug it each night and more pages of restrictions. Her rebellion begins in small ways - she obeys the rules and winds up breaking a centuries old teapot which makes her consider all the “thou shalt nots” of her directives. So she lights a fire in the forbidden fireplace and opens the rooms which are locked. What was someone else’s house she gradually transforms into her own. Eventually she cannot bear to leave the grounds.

Thomas once had a small stand selling second hand “gently used” items and the occasional antique until he was robbed and lost his entire inventory. Now he lives from week to week eking out a living stealing what he can, appearing in court to recount his failures to find a job or pay his bills and going home to a dreary one room flat which he cannot afford to heat. Every day is a drill of desperation as he struggles to find something to steal hoping he can recoup enough money to fix his ailing van and have enough to bathe in hot water. He has neither family or friends. There is no one in whom he can confide or ask for help.

Steph lives with her grandmother who cares nothing for her. Her boyfriend is abusive and blames her for her pregnancy and threatens to harm both her and her child. She had another child six years earlier when she was only fifteen and lost it to the state system so she is determined to keep this one even though she has to quit school and her boyfriend refuses to support her. Distraught she leaves him at a gas station and crawls into an “abandoned” van. It belongs to Thomas who finds himself a companion to Steph and her unborn child.

A series of strange occurrences lead them to Walden Manor where Jean is house sitting. The three form a bond which mends their mutual brokenness. Together they make the house their own. They create a family. They share meals. They share secrets. They weave a tangle of happy memories and tragedies isolating themselves from the rest of the world; using the swimming pool, tending to the garden, eating from the pantry and drinking from the wine cellar. They know their time together must end when the owners return at the end of the summer but ….perhaps they can postpone that eventuality, perhaps they can stay. They dream dreams until a visitor stops by one day, an intruder entering their private domain and they must change their plans.

Morag Joss has outdone herself in this stand alone tale of suspense. The chapters alternate between first and third person as Jean tells us of her past and her hopes for the future and then we read about the illusions the three broken people have constructed. Very much in the tradition of Ruth Rendell and Minette Walters, she builds and peoples a world which is doomed from the onset yet one which the reader wishes could continue. Why are there so many “half broken things” among us and what can we do to prevent or heal their brokenness? Half Broken Things is a literary treat!

--Jane Davis