"The Readers Of The Broken Wheel Recommend" by Katarina Bivald (2015)
The best thing about Katarina Bivald’s “The Readers Of The Broken Wheel Recommend” (2015) is that it is a book about two book lovers who don’t even realize that they love the world and their community even more than they love the books themselves. Amy, a woman from rural Iowa, more specifically, a run-down impoverished town in middle America, and Sara, a sweet and shy girl from Sweden, actually never get to meet. Instead, they are pen pals, and when Sara finally reaches Broken Wheel, Iowa to meet her, Amy is dead. But back to the previous point: what is it about books that makes them so special? It doesn’t matter what you read. Isn’t the answer that books provide a view into a world different than our own? Where we learn about people or persons that reflect us and our inner yearnings or else teach us why and how each individual inhabits this life in completely new and unexpected ways? “Readers Of The Broken Wheel Recommend” shows us how books somehow always had to begin wi...