The Bowl Is Already Broken: A Novel

by Mary Kay Zuravleff

Overview

A big, rewarding novel about art, politics, family, terrorism, courage, and happiness.

Promise Whittaker, the diminutive but decisive acting director of the National Museum of Asian Art, is pregnant again--and that's just the beginning of her difficulties. Her mentor, the previous director, suddenly walked away from his job with no explanation, and now is on a dig somewhere in the Taklamakan desert. Her favorite curator has dropped their newest treasure, a bowl once owned by Thomas Jefferson, during the ceremony celebrating its acquisition. Another colleague, desperate for a son, has been embezzling from the museum to pay for her fertility treatments. And her far too handsome, far too elusive ancillary director is clearly up to no good.
Confronting challenge after challenge at work and at home, Promise is one of the most offbeat, original, winning characters in recent fiction. The Bowl Is Already Broken is all brains, all soul, and all heart--brimming with ideas, provocative, and deeply satisfying.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781429923903
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	03/21/2006
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	432
File size:	489 KB

About the Author

Mary Kay Zuravleff is the author of The Frequency of Souls (FSG, 1996). A former editor of books and exhibition texts for the Smithsonian Institution, she lives in Washington, D.C., with her family.

Mary Kay Zuravleff is also the author of The Bowl Is Already Broken, which The New York Times praised as “a tart, affectionate satire of the museum world’s bickering and scheming,” and The Frequency of Souls, which the Chicago Tribune deemed “a beguiling and wildly inventive first novel.” Honors for her work include the American Academy’s Rosenthal Award and the James Jones First Novel Award, and she has been nominated for the Orange Prize. She lives in Washington, D.C., where she serves on the board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation and is a cofounder of the D.C. Women Writers Group.

Reading Group Guide

Discussion Questions
1. How did you feel about Promise, her passions as well as her many predicaments? Did her work or domestic life seem exaggerated? Ultimately, are she and Leo good parents?
2. Did Joseph abandon the museum, or did he understand that it was time for him to move on? How does Joseph's perception of himself change when he receives the memo from the Castle and when he arrives in the desert? How did your opinion of him change throughout the novel?
3. Leo can be self-righteous about his Amnesty International efforts and critical of Promise's work—both her zeal for art commissioned by ruthless tyrants as well as the notion of an American museum owning so many of Asia's treasures. Why does he join her cause? Did you feel differently about him as the book progressed?
4. Why does the book begin with the bowl breaking? How does your knowledge of its demise affect the story of how it came to be so valuable?
5. Discuss the role that humor plays in this book.
6. Arthur is passionate about the Chinese ceramics in the museum's collection, and he believes his passion should be rewarded. Compare his attitude toward the museum and its visitors with Min's, Promise's, and Talbot's.
7. Joseph preached, "Never underestimate the power of an original work of art." How does the idea of the original play out through the book?
8. Why does Emmy so readily dismantle the Washington life that she and Joseph led? What is her connection to Asian art? Does she withdraw from or transcend ordinary life?
9. Is Min calculating or pragmatic? In what ways does her background illuminate the ethical dilemmas she and the museum face?
10. At one point, Promise thinks of Joseph, Rumi, and her mother as her personal trinity. What inspiration does she gather from Rumi, and where do his poems lead her? What about her mother's no-nonsense advice and actions?
11. What does Arthur see in Talbot? How complicit are Talbot, Leo, and Arthur in the bowl's destruction?
12. Several of the characters are stunned by loss, only to be bowled over by further loss. Joseph, for one example, loses his museum and his home before his life is also threatened. While Promise's family and work arrangement are already unmanageable, her pregnancy and promotion cause her to lose what balance she had—next, she discovers the threat to the museum, and then the bowl breaks! How does anyone overcome such breakage? Amid such difficulties, what allows us to appreciate that "the world outside is vast and intricate?"

Editorial Reviews

An authoritative novel about the museum world. . . . Her wit is equal to her wisdom.” —The Seattle Times

“The Smithsonian Institute is many things, most of them quite wonderful . . . but to the best of my knowledge it has rarely if ever been the inspiration and setting for a novel. . . . Zuravleff is very smart, knows her subject and writes very well.” —The Washington Post

“This multi-layered, erudite novel implies that it is only in the face of destruction, in the gathering of the shards, that meaning and humanity reside.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“The Bowl Is Already Broken is pure delight. . . . All of us would enjoy this book.” —The Roanoke Times

From the Publisher